2023-01-21
24 分钟This is in conversation from Apple News.
I'm Shemitah Basu.
Today, the hunt to bring down the biggest crime lords of the dark web.
On the morning of July 5th of 2017, a group of undercover agents were all posted around a quiet cul de sac in the outskirts of Bangkok, Thailand.
One of them is pretending to be an electrician working in a wiring box on a telephone pole.
Another is pretending to be a gardener.
Two are pretending to shop for real estate in this house at the end of the street.
That's Andy Greenberg.
He's a senior writer for Wired.
There's also a whole team of agents and prosecutors in this war room across the city and the Thai police headquarters who are watching all of this on a live surveillance feed.
The agents see that the target is.
In position and they say it's go time.
Like, let's.
Let's do this.
This.
What Andy is describing here is the end of a massive international sting called Operation Bayonet.
It brought down the biggest illegal marketplace on the Internet, the man who was running it, and so many other bad actors.
This is a classic follow the money story, but with a twist.
How do you follow cryptocurrency transactions?
See, all the bad actors on these sites saw cryptocurrency as the ultimate anonymous handwri shake a digital briefcase at a drop spot.