Tracers in the dark : the global hunt for the crime lords of cryptocurrency

First Title Value for Searching:

Personal Author:

Greenberg, Andy

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

xi, 367 pages ; 25 cm

Summary:

"A propulsive story of a new breed of investigators who have cracked the Bitcoin blockchain, taking once-anonymous realms of money, drugs, and violence and holding them up to the light Black markets have always thrived in the shadows of society. Increasingly, these enterprises-drug dealing, money laundering, human trafficking, terrorist funding-have found their shadows online. Digital crime lords inhabiting lawless corners of the internet have operated more freely than their analog counterparts could have ever dreamed of. At the heart of their massive conspiracies: cryptocurrency. By transacting not in dollars or pounds but in Bitcoin-a currency with anonymous ledgers, overseen by no government, beholden to no bankers-black marketeers robbed law enforcement for years of their chief method of cracking down on criminal markets, namely, following the money. But what if the centerpiece of this dark economy held a secret, fatal flaw? What if their currency wasn't so cryptic after all? An investigator using the right mixture of technical wizardry, financial forensics, and old-fashioned persistence could crack open an entire world of crime. Men with No Names is a story of crime and consequences unlike any other. With unprecedented access to the major players in federal law enforcement and private industry, veteran cybersecurity reporter Andy Greenberg tells an astonishing saga of criminal empires built and destroyed. He introduces an IRS agent with a defiant streak; a Bitcoin-tracing Danish entrepreneur; and a colorful ensemble of hardboiled agents and prosecutors as they delve deep into the crypto-underworld. The result is a thrilling, globe-spanning story of dirty cops, drug bazaars, sex-abuse rings, and the biggest takedown of an online narcotics market in the history of the internet. This is a cat-and-mouse story and a tale of a technological one-upmanship that's utterly of our time. Filled with canny maneuvering and shocking twists, it answers a provocative question: How would some of the world's most brazen criminals behave if they were sure they could never get caught?"--

Subject Term:

Publication Info:

New York : Doubleday, [2022]

Subject:

Computer crimes

Commercial crimes

Cryptocurrencies

Transnational crime

Computers and crime

Cyber crimes

Cybercrimes

Electronic crimes (Computer crimes)

Internet crimes

Corporate crime

Crimes, Financial

Financial crimes

Offenses affecting the public trade

Crypto coins

Cryptocoins

Multinational crime

Transborder crime

SAILS ISBN:

9780385548090

Available:

Library	Shelf Number	Shelf Location	Status
Searching... Bridgewater Public Library	364.168 GREENBERG 2022	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Dartmouth - Southworth	364.168 GRE 2022	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Foxboro - Boyden Library	364.168 GREENBERG	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Mansfield Public Library	364.16 GREE	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Middleborough Public Library	364.168 GRE	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Norton Public Library	364.168 GRE 2022	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Plainville Public Library	364.168 GRE	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Richards Memorial Library	364.168 G829	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Seekonk Public Library	364.168 GREENBERG	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Wareham Free Library	364.168 GRE 2022	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... West Bridgewater PL	364.16 GRE	NONFICTION	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

From the award-winning author of Sandworm comes the propulsive story of a new breed of investigators who have cracked the Bitcoin blockchain, exposing once-anonymous realms of money, drugs, and violence. "I love the book... It reads like a thriller... These stories are amazing." (Michael Lewis)

Over the last decade, a single innovation has massively fueled digital black markets: cryptocurrency. Crime lords inhabiting lawless corners of the internet have operated more freely--whether in drug dealing, money laundering, or human trafficking--than their analog counterparts could have ever dreamed of. By transacting not in dollars or pounds but in currencies with anonymous ledgers, overseen by no government, beholden to no bankers, these black marketeers have sought to rob law enforcement of their chief method of cracking down on illicit finance: following the money.

But what if the centerpiece of this dark economy held a secret, fatal flaw? What if their currency wasn't so cryptic after all? An investigator using the right mixture of technical wizardry, financial forensics, and old-fashioned persistence could uncover an entire world of wrongdoing.

Tracers in the Dark is a story of crime and pursuit unlike any other. With unprecedented access to the major players in federal law enforcement and private industry, veteran cybersecurity reporter Andy Greenberg tells an astonishing saga of criminal empires built and destroyed. He introduces an IRS agent with a defiant streak, a Bitcoin-tracing Danish entrepreneur, and a colorful ensemble of hardboiled agents and prosecutors as they delve deep into the crypto-underworld. The result is a thrilling, globe-spanning story of dirty cops, drug bazaars, trafficking rings, and the biggest takedown of an online narcotics market in the history of the Internet.

Utterly of our time, Tracers in the Dark is a cat-and-mouse story and a tale of a technological one-upmanship. Filled with canny maneuvering and shocking twists, it answers a provocative question: How would some of the world's most brazen criminals behave if they were sure they could never get caught?

Reviews (5)

Publisher's Weekly Review

In this sobering account, cybersecurity reporter Greenberg (Sandworm) delves into the efforts of law enforcement agencies and cybersleuths to trace criminal activity involving cryptocurrency, starting with the takedown in 2013 of Silk Road, "the sprawling, Bitcoin-based, billion-dollar online black market for dark web narcotics sales, created by a pseudonymous figure known as the Dread Pirate Roberts." It took the FBI, IRS, and DHS two-and-a-half years of dogged research to identify the site's founder as Ross Ulbricht, a 29-year-old Texan with no criminal record, and arrest him in a San Francisco library. Other operations have targeted child pornography websites and ransomware attacks. Greenberg examines in fascinating detail how criminals have employed technology for their nefarious ends, along the way providing a history of Bitcoin and a look at a possible future technology that would make "truly untraceable and anonymous finances possible." He brings to vivid life the assorted players, including the agents who cracked the crimes, those in law enforcement who succumbed to the allure of fast money on the dark web, and the private citizens who ushered in the golden age of cryptocurrency tracing. This is a must-have for the true crime shelf. Agent: Eric Lupfer, Fletcher & Co. (Nov.)

Kirkus Review

A sinuous, eminently readable story of the darker corners of cyberspace. Who would have thought an IRS agent could become a legal superhero? That's just the case with a criminal investigator named Tigran Gambaryan, who had been assigned to "busting gangs in Oakland who had graduated from dealing drugs to filing fraudulent tax returns with stolen identities," a switch that had the benefit of bringing in more money while carrying less jail time. Fearing that he'd spend his career chasing down small fry, Gambaryan turned his attention to cybercrimes, which in turn led him to Bitcoin. Then at Forbes and now at Wired, technology journalist Greenberg was exploring cryptocurrency himself and trying to land an interview with the legendary Silk Road mastermind known as the Dread Pirate Roberts, who was "making millions of dollars in highly illegal narcotics sales…while evading every global law enforcement agency." DPR assumed that cryptocurrency was an impregnable fortress that couldn't be "de-anonymized." Not so, and he was finally taken down after e-chatting for months with a supposed online moderator who was in reality a Homeland Security agent. With sometimes competitive agencies working together--even the IRS, which one judge called "the redheaded stepchild of law enforcement"--and spreading the net to include both criminals and police agencies abroad, the chase quickened after DPR fell. Greenberg tells the stories of demolishing crime empires like AlphaBay and Hansa and their bosses with verve that's refreshing for a book full of computers, code-breaking, and electronic cat-and-mouse games, including one memorable moment in which the object of an international police hunt "had, entirely by chance, arrived at a meeting at the exact hotel where they were staying and sat down at the table next to them." Greenberg's book is reminiscent in all the best ways of Clifford Stoll's Cuckoo's Egg, smoothly blending crime writing with matters of the deepest techno-geekery. An absorbing work of true crime--and, as the bad guys will tell you, true punishment. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

Greenberg follows up 2019's Sandworm, which focused on Russian computer hackers, with this spellbinding story of the efforts of law-enforcement agencies around the world to bring down the criminal elements who use cryptocurrency (Bitcoin, for example) to fund their illegal activities. Written with great enthusiasm and with an ear for the dramatic turn of phrase--readers familiar with the work of Ben Mezrich will note a similarity of approach--this is the kind of book that yanks the reader's eyes wide open. Could this stuff called cryptocurrency, which you can't touch or see or accumulate in any physical sense, really be the foundation of criminal empires around the world? Well, yes. Greenberg, a senior writer with Wired magazine, explains how and why such a thing is possible, and how incredibly difficult it is to find the people who operate in the dark recesses of the internet. He also introduces us to some of the good and bad guys (and a couple of people who straddle that thin line). Lively, highly relevant, and more than a little scary.

Choice Review

This is a tale of the dark web and cryptocurrency. It is a detective story populated by criminals and federal agents from the Treasury Department's Secret Service, the FBI, and the IRS, written by Greenberg, a fearless, award-winning senior writer for Wired with a sharp eye for detail and a relentless pursuit of the truth. Among the truths Greenberg reveals is the fallibility of both the dark web and the block chain technology on which cryptocurrency is based. Block chain transactions must be transmitted from a determinate location to other, often local, servers. These nodes in the block chain network must confirm the transaction for it to be recognized and posted in the digital block chain. Thus, transactions in block chain are traceable, as demonstrated by the law enforcement actions described in the book. The perception by criminals and many in law enforcement to the contrary creates opportunities for arrests and prosecutions, even of law enforcement officers. As Greenberg illustrates, the knowledge of block chain's vulnerability is spreading, and law enforcement forces in many countries are cooperating in investigations leading to prosecutions. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --Satyananda J. Gabriel, Mount Holyoke College

Library Journal Review

Many readers do not understand how cryptocurrency works nor know that federal agents are attempting to take down a criminal empire of digital black markets. Greenberg (Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers) methodically and meticulously explains the way cryptocurrency functions. He documents how Bitcoin has been used to conduct illegal activities and the agencies that follow it. The author debunks the myth that cryptocurrency is untraceable through a discussion of cases that agents have cracked by going after the heads of a dark website, which included the work of dirty agents trying to stay one step ahead of being caught. Since this illegal activity has developed only in the past decade, federal government agencies have a learning curve to fight it. These stories are fascinating and so enthralling, it is hard to distinguish real people from the aliases used to protect identities and privacies. Greenberg shows that tracking cryptocurrency is at once a cat-and-mouse game and a whack-a-mole situation. VERDICT This highly recommended book has been picked up by Jigsaw Productions to develop into a scripted screen adaptation, a documentary, and a podcast. There are few books on the crypto underworld, making this a must for all libraries.--Michael Sawyer

Author's Note	p. xiii
Prologue Proof of Concept	p. 3
Part I Men with No Names
Chapter 1 Eladio Guzman Fuentes	p. 9
Chapter 2 Nob	p. 16
Chapter 3 The Auditor	p. 20
Chapter 4 Cryptoanarchy	p. 26
Chapter 5 Silk Road	p. 31
Chapter 6 The Dread Pirate	p. 35
Chapter 7 The Puzzle	p. 41
Chapter 8 Men with No Names	p. 48
Chapter 9 Cyber Narc	p. 57
Chapter 10 Glen Park	p. 63
Chapter 11 The Double Agent	p. 66
Chapter 12 Receipts	p. 72
Chapter 13 FrenchMaid, DeathFromAbove	p. 78
Chapter 14 The Trial	p. 83
Part II Tracer for Hire
Chapter 15 Collapse	p. 91
Chapter 16 Dirty Money	p. 99
Chapter 17 Noise	p. 103
Chapter 18 The Second Agent	p. 110
Chapter 19 A Hole in the Vault	p. 117
Chapter 20 BTC-e	p. 122
Chapter 21 WME	p. 127
Chapter 22 Vinnik	p. 131
Chapter 23 Consolation Prizes	p. 135
Part III Alphabay
Chapter 24 Alpha02	p. 143
Chapter 25 The Tip	p. 150
Chapter 26 Cazes	p. 156
Chapter 27 Thailand	p. 162
Chapter 28 Tunafish	p. 168
Chapter 29 Rawmeo	p. 176
Chapter 30 Hansa	p. 185
Chapter 31 Takeover	p. 193
Chapter 32 "Advanced Analysis"	p. 199
Chapter 33 The Athenee	p. 204
Chapter 34 Takedown	p. 208
Chapter 35 Captivity	p. 216
Chapter 36 Postmortem	p. 223
Chapter 37 The Trap	p. 228
Chapter 38 Aftermath	p. 233
Chapter 39 Suvarnabhumi Airport	p. 238
Part IV Welcome to Video
Chapter 40 Five Characters	p. 243
Chapter 41 "Serach Videos"	p. 250
Chapter 42 Octopus	p. 256
Chapter 43 Test Cases	p. 262
Chapter 44 Seoul	p. 269
Chapter 45 The Net	p. 274
Chapter 46 Ripples	p. 279
Part V The Next Round
Chapter 47 Open Season	p. 287
Chapter 48 Limits	p. 295
Chapter 49 Gray Zones	p. 304
Chapter 50 Rumker	p. 313
Epilogue	p. 319
Acknowledgments	p. 327
Source Notes	p. 329
Notes	p. 331
Index	p. 351

Available:

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Summary

Reviews (5)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Kirkus Review

Booklist Review

Choice Review

Library Journal Review

Table of Contents