Leaked reports reveal Chainalysis aiding law enforcement on crypto-related crimes
Blockchain analysis company Chainalysis has been cooperating with police investigations by collecting IP information through a ‘walletexplorer.com’ website secretly owned and managed by Chainalysis, Coindesk reported on Tuesday.
The documents, first revealed on the Dark Web, were allegedly used when Chainalysis made a presentation to Italian law enforcement agencies.
It is currently not known when the materials were prepared, but Italian authorities were cracking down on the darknet market ‘Berlusconi Market’ in 2019, and it was likely that the presentation was made as part of the investigation.
According to the document, the company used a website called ‘walletexplorer.com’ to collect the IP addresses of cryptocurrency users who visited the site.
WalletExplorer.com displays the balance and remittance history of wallet addresses, apparently used by malefactors to check transactions without fear of “leaving a ‘footprint’” on crypto exchanges.
The documents read:
“Using this dataset we were able to provide law enforcement with meaningful leads related to IP data associated with a relevant cryptocurrency address. It is also possible to conduct a reverse lookup on any known IP address to identify other BTC addresses.
It can also collect data from a data form address that has yet to transit the Blockchain — that is, the BTC address provided as part of a kidnapping or life-threatening investigation — if the suspect checks their address.”
Chainalysis has not yet commented on the issue, neither declining nor accepting the rumors.
News media The Block reported that walletexplorer.com’s developer Aleš Janda joined Chainalysis as a developer and researcher in 2015. In addition, the website has a small attached on the bottom of the page that advertises the blockchain analytics services by Chainalysis.
Chainalysis has tie-ups with US government agencies on co-operating with crypto-related frauds. Just yesterday, the US Treasury announced sanctions against Russian-based crypto exchange Suex after it was found receiving over $160 million in Bitcoins, including deposits from darknets, over the past three years.
It was revealed that Chainalysis was co-operating in the investigation and identified the wallet addresses engaged in money laundering.
The post Leaked reports reveal Chainalysis aiding law enforcement on crypto-related crimes appeared first on Our Bitcoin News.
OhNoCryptocurrency via https://www.ohnocrypto.com/ @Gauri Bhatia, @Khareem Sudlow
