Australian Federal Police (AFP) have seized A$9 million ($5.9 million) in cryptocurrency after breaching an encrypted crypto wallet backup found on a suspect's phone. AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett said the recovery was the results of the “miraculous work” of a knowledge scientist inside the force, now often known as the Crypto Safe Cracker. The money is linked to a suspected organized crime figure who, in response to AFP, sold a technical product to suspected criminals and stored the proceeds in cryptocurrencies.
Address by AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett on the National Press Club. Source: Australian Federal Police
The crypto wallet was not open. The suspect refused at hand over the keys to the crypto wallet, despite a law in Australia that permits for a jail sentence of as much as 10 years if investigators should not given access to encrypted material. For this reason, the AFP had to search out one other strategy to get the funds.
How digital forensics linked the encoded image to a wallet
AFP digital forensics officers found password-protected notes on the suspect's cell phone. They also found an image that showed random numbers and words. Commissioner Krissy Barrett said the numbers were broken down into six groups. The team identified greater than 50 possible mixtures. AFP analysts confirmed that the numbers are linked to a crypto wallet or a 24-word seed phrase, reasonably than regular phone data.
Barrett said:
“We knew that if we couldn't open the crypto wallet and if the alleged perpetrator was convicted, he would go away prison a multimillionaire upon his release – all from the profits of organized crime. This was not a suitable end result for our members.”
The AFP needed to unblock the crypto wallet to forestall the A$9 million from flowing back to the suspect.
The AFP asked a knowledge scientist to decipher the number sequences. He saw that the sequences didn't look computer-generated. He said: “Some of the number sequences felt improper and looked like they weren’t computer generated.” The scientist also said that they “looked like a human had modified the sequence by adding numbers just a few sequences ago.” He tested the concept the suspect had added extra digits to dam the starting phrase.
He removed the primary number from each sequence. Then the strings matched a sound 24-word seed phrase. With this starting phrase, the crypto wallet was opened with 9 million AUD (5.9 million US dollars). Barrett said the suspect tried to create a “crypto bust” by changing the numbers. The AFP digital forensics team still reached the funds.
AFP Criminal Assets Confiscation Task Force to Withhold the Funds
The seized cryptocurrency was confiscated by the AFP-led Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce. This unit manages digital assets, money and property related to organized crime. In this case, as with other AFP crypto recoveries, the funds will likely be withheld until a court decides on confiscation. If the court orders confiscation of the criminal assets, the cash will likely be transferred to a Commonwealth account and later distributed to crime prevention and law enforcement programs by Home Secretary Tony Burke.
This was not the primary crypto recovery by the identical AFP expert. In one other case, the identical data scientist helped get better greater than A$3 million in digital assets using a distinct decoding method. Both cases showed that Australian Federal Police can use digital forensics to succeed in crypto wallets even when suspects don’t share seed phrases.
