Australian federal police officer charged with stealing 81.5 Bitcoin (BTC) during raid
Federal agent William Wheatle reportedly secretly transferred 81.62 BTC from a Bitcoin wallet he owned without a court order.
This is a very old story about a drug raid. In 2019, Australian police raided the home of an illegal drug dealer and discovered a cryptocurrency hardware wallet.
According to the report, federal police officer William Wheatle secretly transferred a total of 81.62 BTC to his cryptocurrency account on the Binance cryptocurrency exchange.
Police departments were not permitted to access the funds in those cryptocurrency wallets without a court order. After a three-week court-ordered process, the police department found the wallet empty.
As funds were transferred after the time of the raid, it was believed the drug dealer used his wallet phrase backup key to access funds from other cryptocurrency wallets.
An investigation by Detective Deon Achtypis revealed that the IP address that accessed funds from the alleged cryptocurrency wallet belonged to Federal Agent William Wheatle.
However, although the accused Federal Police agents deny all of these claims, all facts and evidence point to Wheatle.
The value of the stolen funds in 2019 was only $309,000, but at the current trading price, it amounts to $4.2 million.
The report shows a clear picture that corruption can be easily banned with the help of cryptocurrency as it is decentralized and traceable using perfect tracking software.
Over the past few years, there has been a surge in the adoption of cryptocurrency transaction tracking software by enforcement agencies in the country.
Additionally, in this case investigators used cryptocurrency tracking software, otherwise they would not have been able to find the thieves.
In August 2023, Canadian police announced that they had begun using cryptocurrency tracking software Chainalytic Reactor to track illegal cryptocurrency transactions.
In 2023, approximately $2.61 billion worth of cryptocurrency assets were stolen by malicious actors, but $674.9 million was successfully recovered with the help of these cryptocurrency tracking software enforcement agencies.
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