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Comment by dickjocke | Hacker News Reader

You think the FBI and SEC couldn't get a warrant, look through 10000 people's trading activity and have a list of 100 most likely suspects within a single day?

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That's severely miscalculating the number of traders (around 10 million individuals, often with multiple accounts and multiple strategies, and not counting institutions). What I'm saying is that hiding in plain sight might be very easy - just join the crowd for a week and you'll look like many beginners that have scored surprisingly.

You'd only have to look at the traders with enormous short positions on specific stocks, though.

It's likely you could continue to narrow things down via KYC data; location, past trading history, etc.

Even very average positions could yield millions, especially a series of them. Imagine a "manager" of a MLM doing this with their team of sheeps. There are many teams like that.

Do you trade? There are many ways to bet against a stock without actually selling it short. Shorting a stock is not even that capital efficient, and is capped at 100% return.

Sell a call spread, buy a put spread, do a diagonal calendar...

> Do you trade?

The more relevant question is "does the SEC employ people aware of the various techniques available", to which the answer is "of course".

You'd be surprised. The SEC has largely been captured by the industry it regulates. Most employees there are junior level, looking to get hired into Wall Street.

There are certainly some strong employees as well, but they have only so much time.

> The SEC has largely been captured by the industry it regulates.

An objection that, while true, doesn't impact "will they go after Bitcoin scammers" much. If anything, it's precisely the sort of thing they'd prefer to do over fighting with industry.

I think the problem is you would need to use a previously active account to pull it off. If you get this hack today without an account history going back a ways, you're easy to find.

Two weeks of activity would be more than enough to get lost in the sea of lucky beginners.

You think they could convict on "We looked at a thousand accounts and his was the most suspicious?"

If you don't leave evidence for a targeted inspection against you, it wouldn't help them to be able to narrow it down to "you probably did it" if they couldn't clear the "reasonable doubt" hurdle.

> If you don't leave evidence for a targeted inspection against you

Regulators already surveil and request records in respect of trading activity following corporate actions. No warrant needed.

No, I mean that you don't leave evidence for a targeted inspection against you to find. i.e. You execute the hack cleanly, the inspection against you finds nothing, and all they are left with is your suspicious trade, which is suspicious, but not prosecutable.

Before you're even under surveillance, you have to be perfect in leaving no fingerprints for XX years before/after and they only need you to screw up OPSEC once. Easy?

You just have to leave no evidence of the hack that links to you, but you have to do that anyway to get away.

There's nothing to hide after the fact. Dump the burner computer you used for the hack when you're done and never log in to the accounts, VPNs and VPSs you used again.

That you have the money is an open and legal fact, so you don't have to conceal anything really.

No, but it's enough to get a warrant for data or surveillance until they have enough evidence to build a case. They need to clear "probable cause" not "reasonable doubt."

The government has executed innocent people, I don't know why it would be so hard to imagine getting a conviction on circumstantial evidence.

Agreed. There are people in jail at this very moment, not because they were convicted of a crime, but because they couldn’t pay bail to get out.

You think government-run organizations are that efficient? Have you ever been to the DMV?

I think it is very much a case-by-case basis, depending on a number of factors. Factors include, but are not limited to, what part of what government, purpose/mission, funding, incentives, and local culture.

Yes, one can find examples of incompetence and inefficiency if one looks, but one can find the opposite as well. I think a blanket attitude of government == inefficient incompetence is an unhelpful one, and a major part of how you get DMVs that deserve the purgatory comparison.

I know that's like a formulaic crack, but the last time I was at the DMV, I did wait like 2.5 hours ... because there were a huge number of people being served by a small number of people.

That's what efficiency looks like. Each transaction took a small amount of time, the clerks processed each one efficiently and had little downtime between them. Each clerk was maximally utilized, and the DMV was fully utilized all day.

A DMV where you could walk into at any time and a clerk was available to help you immediately would be incredibly inefficient: it would have too many clerks who were being paid to stand there not working. Convenient, yes, efficient, no.

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