Thief of $90M in seized U.S.-controlled crypto is gov't contractor's son

https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/single/lick-theft

402•pavel_lishin•1w ago

Comments

aryan14•1w ago

And he has been and continues to make fun of the investigators, publicly mocking investigators and sending small amounts from the fraudulent wallets to investigators.

Crazy world

grugagag•1w ago

He’s reaping what he saw. Things aren’t looking good for him nor his father, a lesson both of them will painfully learn from. Father career is possibly over.

lostlogin•1w ago

> Things aren’t looking good for him nor his father, a lesson both of them will painfully learn from

You’re a hell of an optimist.

I’d say that it’s just as likely that the pardon sharpie is being readied, just as soon as the super PAC donation clears.

paulpauper•1w ago

Put it into Trump's coin as a donation

jLaForest•1w ago

Trump already rug pulled

kevin_thibedeau•1w ago

Bribes are $3M cash. He's good.

paulpauper•1w ago

why would that make a difference

lupire•1w ago

X can't bribe Y by buying Z that Y has no interest in.

londons_explore•1w ago

> Father career is possibly over.

Plenty of people would happily flush their career down the drain to run away with their family and $90M

tartoran•1w ago

I guess so but what about when you get caught and get nothing?

knowitnone3•1w ago

if you get caught. just saw a video on a couple who stole a Brinks armor car; disappeared into Europe with new identities; never caught until female turned herself in. Not everybody gets caught.

lupire•1w ago

Is that same or different from the gang who robbed an armored car for about $100M worth of goods, and ICE stopped the prosecution and deported one of the robbers, before the stolen goods were recovered?

wmf•1w ago

Different cases. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna9766179 vs https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/immigration-officials-a...

tartoran•1w ago

Sure, if you get caught. It's a huge risk though..

lazide•1w ago

Just like many people are optimists in thinking criminals will get consequences, criminals are often optimists in thinking they won’t get consequences.

Both have cherry-picked their life experiences to support this view.

paulpauper•1w ago

the feds haven't even acknowledged there was a theft. it's possible they still don't know or somehow don't have the evidence to bring charges

caminante•1w ago

Or this is a false accusation.

I don't have the knowledge to sanity check the claims, but I would've figured someone would be getting rolled by now. I recall that the dad was scrubbing socials along with the son, but that could be token harassment.

big_youth•1w ago

They did something, how else could the son flex watches worth 6 figures.

caminante•1w ago

Likely? Yes.

Watches? You can also be right. Though, I don't think you need $90 million to spend <$1 million on a watch to splurge.

cucumber3732842•1w ago

You can rent anything.

wmf•1w ago

The feds won't say anything until after they arrest the father and son. Obviously there is an investigation going on but it takes more than a few days.

bayarearefugee•1w ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_granted_executi...

Pretty sure they'll both be fine as long as they still have access to that money.

jongjong•1w ago

He and his son should be in jail. This is criminal; whether it's theft or criminal negligence.

duxup•1w ago

If he "invests" some of his funds ... could get a pardon.

inlined•1w ago

Tbf, accepting a pardon is legally admitting guilt per SCOTUS and disgorgement would allow the funds to be sized

avaer•1w ago

In theory. Do you really think that would happen in the current ecosystem?

duxup•1w ago

Even "better", Trump can extort more ...

trhway•1w ago

Dr. Fauchi pardon comes to mind. I doubt that his accepting of pardon was an admission of guilt. He wasn't even charged, so how can he admit the guilt?

And i think that similar preemptive pardon here, without charge and thus any guilt admission, wouldn't allow the fund seizure.

laughing_man•1w ago

The one thing the government will not tolerate is embarrassment. There's no way he avoids a long prison sentence.

gmuslera•1w ago

There's no honor among thieves.

cucumber3732842•1w ago

This isn't a "honor among thieves" thing. This is a "getting one over on someone you don't like because there's no consequences" thing.

This is a petty dispute. I'm not gonna go put a bullet in someone who over a petty dispute like this. Nobody is, not even thieves and other people who live outside the law. That's just absurd. Someone who I've wronged in doing so (i.e. someone who likes them) might put one back in me. Or there might be other consequences. People let those things go because it's just not worth it vs the risk of consequences.

But say I can do something that will cause the government to go after someone for me at no risk to myself... That's basically what happened here.

This is basically an attempted (we'll see if it succeeds) DDOS reflection attack but with government.

MisterTea•1w ago

A bit lost here. Is there more backstory to this? It reads as if the government contractors son stole the 90 million from the government?

ortusdux•1w ago

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/us-investigating-40-million...

FatalLogic•1w ago

This would be a much better link for this post

There's a lot more detail, and delivered in more professional way

altairprime•1w ago

If you email the mods about this (and link to your comment), they might well agree and update the post link.

alistairSH•1w ago

Correct. US Marshalls have a contract with this guy’s dad to mange their crypto holdings (seized as part of investigations). Kid steals money but can’t resist showing off to friends and gets “busted”. Except the government still doesn’t appear to acknowledge a theft even occurred and the kid taunts investigators by sending them small amounts of ETH.

knowitnone3•1w ago

just to let the kid know, I'm one of the investigators. I hate being taunted with any type of cryptocoin, cash of any denomination. I also hate gold and silver. I won't sleep until I catch you or $10 whichever comes first.

bluemenot•1w ago

I wonder if technically the small amounts of eth are bribes…

SilverBirch•1w ago

It's pretty common for crypto wallets that have been linked to illegal activity get blacklisted. So by sending a bit of crypto to the guy that figured out who he is, if/when the government investigate and freeze accounts the guy who busted him will get their account frozen too.

mrgoldenbrown•1w ago

Aka "dusting"

shrubble•1w ago

So much of the government is like this, they will hire some connected guy to manage something in a slightly competent manner.

Just learned that the federal government has long term leases on office buildings that congressmen have a financial interest in. More disappointment.

ajross•1w ago

To be clear: the crypto in question wasn't managed in even a slightly competent manner. It was literally embezzled.

nerdsniper•1w ago

It was embezzled in a slightly competent manner. Not very competently.

roysting•1w ago

oh, yeah, I forgot about that grift. Another favorite of mine are the many holier-than-thou NGOs that are little more than friends and family enrichment schemes, even more grotesquely than the federal government contracting grift that is not just replete with political and staffer corruption, but also just plain run of the mill nepotism... literally parent hiring and managing children. And no, this has been pervasive for many years now. I would say it really got bad in the aughts when the budgets blew up and things like enforcement and prosecution just couldn't keep up with the money spigots, not to mention that hiring criteria other than competence led to the most lazy, and disinterested people responsible for investigation and prosecution to the point that you basically had to build a case and deliver a signed, recorded, and notarized confession before anyone would even look at obvious corruption and grift.

belter•1w ago

>> More disappointment.

This whole headline in incredibly comical: https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/media-center/press-rel...

https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/dem...

N_Lens•1w ago

I think the level of corruption and blatant disregard for laws by the privileged we're seeing is unlike anything in modern history. If Nixon's watergate happened today it wouldn't even be a blip in the 24hrs news cycle, that's how far gone the erosion of institutions and rule of law is.

chneu•1w ago

It's pretty wild how "normalized" it got within my generation.

What's more wild is how much of the US believes that the other party would be much worse.

To be clear, Republicans are absolutely the current cause of this insanity that's going on. The two party system doesn't help, but Republicans have committed insanity while claiming everyone else is doing worse. Trump is a literal pedophile who openly admitted to hating immigrants his entire life. We all saw this coming.

NicoJuicy•1w ago

That's how Russian propaganda works

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood

renewiltord•1w ago

It didn’t. You started paying attention. That’s all that changed. Hillary Clinton was pulling exceptional performance on cattle futures and Paul Pelosi had a strange knack for picking stock that reacted well to laws his wife pushed for. It is brazen today because they’re just launching $MELANIA and shit like that and selling pardons but that’s only because that’s user-visible. If someone siphoned your taxes or performed insider trading you wouldn’t even know.

But corruption has been part and parcel of US politics. Or are we supposed to believe that things like the Chappaquiddick incident were actually innocent accidents?

When I was younger I remember thinking that George Bush pardoning Scooter Libby was outrageous. Then I found out what these people were up to routinely.

tbossanova•1w ago

Aaand people wonder why we don’t trust politicians. I know a couple of good people who have tried to get into politics, just on a local scale. They said it was the worst thing they ever did

tim333•1w ago

I had a look at the Wikipedia on Chappaquiddick and it doesn't mention anything corruption? Seems to have been drunk driving? Not sure how it relates?

linksnapzz•1w ago

It relates, insofar as the driver was not charged, and in fact managed to run for president (and almost won the Democratic nomination) several years later, which a charge of manslaughter generally precludes.

drdaeman•1w ago

> it wouldn't even be a blip in the 24hrs news cycle

It would be, but both mass media and people attention spans have changed, so it would be very different in a lot of ways.

alfiedotwtf•1w ago

Taken further, the reason you wouldn’t see it on the news is because the media is controlled by the people in government and friends…

Don’t believe me? Google how TikTok got sold off to Trump’s base and now the word “Epstein” has been banned in DMs

tim333•1w ago

>unlike anything in modern history

The stuff currently happening in the US is unusual for the US but mild compared to Putin's Russia which Trump seems a little inspired by. At least you don't have people falling out of windows yet.

tartuffe78•1w ago

How tall is that ballroom going to be?

linksnapzz•1w ago

...should be at least as tall as the Salon de Fetes in the Elysee; that'd be appropriate.

paulpauper•1w ago

It appears the feds were so incompetent they didn't realize the theft had occurred until AFTER Zach's post went viral, and even then, nothing may happen. And to think, had Lick done nothing he likely would have gotten away with it. Perfect crime undone by ego.

Mistletoe•1w ago

There’s another crypto thief that is the son of the head government official…

caycep•1w ago

Molly White really is quite thorough

cj•1w ago

Tangent: what does the govt do with seized crypto? Does it eventually get liquidated?

wmf•1w ago

They used to auction it but I think now they are holding it in a "strategic reserve".

tamarinddreams•1w ago

Yet another attempt to store a lot of Cheddar.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheese

alfiedotwtf•1w ago

I’m sure Kushner is keeping it safe, along with all that non-corrupt Trumpcoin

misiti3780•1w ago

Is the accusation the dad stole the crypto, or the dad AND the son stole the crypto ?

wmf•1w ago

It's not clear.

geor9e•1w ago

The headline is that the son stole the crypto. Maybe your sarcasm went over my head, and you're just saying that the dad is definitely involved too. In which case, probably.

misiti3780•1w ago

i wasnt be sarcastic, it seems so easy to prove i cant believe the kid needed to DOX himself. the US Government puts his dad in charge of shitload of crypto and his son starts live streaming himself buying expensive watches - seems like a slam dunk to me

tcfunk•1w ago

Slightly tangential question but what’s with govt seized crypto assets? I had a bit of Litecoin a while back and went to check my wallet one day to find an FBI landing page instead. Is that just theirs now? Feels a bit like the gov seized control of my savings account.

collingreen•1w ago

Same - lost 500 LTC and 5ish BTC to fbi raid of an exchange back when BTC was ~$12. Sure would love to get that back at current prices!

tasuki•1w ago

> went to check my wallet one day to find an FBI landing page

That's not how wallets work.

qingcharles•1w ago

I mean, it kinda is if all your crypto is held at an exchange.

tasuki•1w ago

An exchange is not a wallet. You don't call your bank a wallet either.

anonymousiam•1w ago

Somewhat reminds me of this: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-federal-agent...

dada78641•1w ago

> Two crypto thieves decided to settle an argument over who was wealthier by screensharing as they transferred crypto between wallets to prove ownership. In doing so, one of them — known online as "Lick" — revealed a wallet address that crypto sleuth zachxbt quickly tied to the theft of around $90 million from US government wallets containing seized crypto assets

Rapp snitches.

janderson215•1w ago

“Sittin’ in court they’ll be their own star witness”

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Thief of $90M in seized U.S.-controlled crypto is gov't contractor's son

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