Speaker 1: I don't want to be.
Speaker 2: He's got flown back on seven hundred w LW between
Speaker 2: Super Bowl and everything else. We are now into the
Speaker 2: second week of the anti Guth three kidnapping. FBI says
Speaker 2: we have no suspects. The family says they will pay
Speaker 2: the ransom several million dollars. So you hear that, you go, wow,
Speaker 2: could they really get away with this? And how does
Speaker 2: a crypto thing work? Anyway?
Speaker 1: Money?
Speaker 2: It's untraceable? Is it like one of those Swiss bank
Speaker 2: accounts that bad guys used to back in the task.
Speaker 2: If you had a Swiss bank account, you're up to
Speaker 2: no good, right, same with crypto?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: So what we see a new wave of kidnapped as
Speaker 2: a result, because if they get away with it, could
Speaker 2: you imagine the floodgates opening up on That is Dave
Speaker 2: the it guy.
Speaker 1: This guy is.
Speaker 2: A former black hat hacker, which mean he's from the
Speaker 2: bad guys that would hack and do things that I
Speaker 2: can't speak of right now, but now has seen the
Speaker 2: lights of white hat hackers. Who helps he good guys
Speaker 2: beat the bad guys and especially when digital meets crypt
Speaker 2: and everything else in blockchain, what it all means Dave, welcome,
Speaker 2: how you ben, brother? Everything here is lovely? Well, let
Speaker 2: me put you back on speaker. There you go, everything
Speaker 2: here is lovely, all right, So let's jump into this thing.
Speaker 2: It's it's a bizarre and gripping story. And you hope
Speaker 2: that she is still alive. Now I would think she
Speaker 2: is simply because the FBI is saying, look, you know,
Speaker 2: there's a kidnapping note, there's ransom. I'm sure the family
Speaker 2: has evidence that she's still alive. Otherwise they wentn't offer
Speaker 2: the money. But how successful in the passes suspend? As
Speaker 2: I recall top of my head, I think was it
Speaker 2: the Colonial pipeline ransom was like two point three million
Speaker 2: dollars or something like that.
Speaker 1: Crypto to me is.
Speaker 2: It seems to me like we've done this before, but
Speaker 2: somehow they've been able to get some of this money.
Speaker 3: Back, right. Yeah, you know, it's really kind of a mix.
Speaker 3: You know, it's not a big difference in a case
Speaker 3: like this. It is from you know, you get ransomware
Speaker 3: on your computer and it's time to pay with bitcoin.
Speaker 3: You know, it's it's traceable, it's not as anonymous as
Speaker 3: people think. You know, Bitcoin in and of itself, isn't anonymous.
Speaker 3: It's all a matter of how you set it up
Speaker 3: and the steps that you can't. You know, you get
Speaker 3: to prethink a little bit, you know, if you really
Speaker 3: if I put my black dad on, if I was
Speaker 3: going to do something like this, I needed to start
Speaker 3: months ago by creating an anonymous you know, bitcoin address.
Speaker 3: But I would need to make sure that I'm bouncing
Speaker 3: my VPNs around through the tour network, which is the
Speaker 3: dark web. I want to make sure that I'm not
Speaker 3: using anything known that you know, it's ever been tied
Speaker 3: to me in the past. I'm not using any banking
Speaker 3: regulation uh countries, you know, at the US in places
Speaker 3: where you know. You mentioned Switzerland lomily enough, but if
Speaker 3: I wanted to cash out, Switzerland would be one of
Speaker 3: the places I would want to cash out too for
Speaker 3: that reason, Wow, for the anonymity. So all right, so
Speaker 3: I wouldn't want.
Speaker 2: To YEA, let me go through the first steps here,
Speaker 2: because you know, again we're still most I don't know
Speaker 2: most people, but younger people certainly have a handle on crypto.
Speaker 2: Most anybody over the age of forty, I think may
Speaker 2: struggle with it. And if you're ever fifty, good luck
Speaker 2: with that. But it's blockchain, it's encoded. It's so they
Speaker 2: set up a I guess they would set up a
Speaker 2: bank account in which the ransom money would be paid
Speaker 2: in crypto.
Speaker 1: How does that whole transfer work? What goes on?
Speaker 3: So it may not necessarily be a bank as typical
Speaker 3: people consider. You know, they're bank down the street. It's
Speaker 3: more of an exchange at crypto exchange, and you know,
Speaker 3: you get online. There are a lot you know, they're
Speaker 3: coinbase and binance and a whole bunch of others. And
Speaker 3: you had to also look at what what kind of
Speaker 3: cryptocurrency is being asked for? You know, it's bitcoin that
Speaker 3: we all throw around bitcoin name because it's the most
Speaker 3: world no name. But there are other into cryptocurrency. They
Speaker 3: use different they have they use different blockchains, they have Ethereum,
Speaker 3: and many others. So even Trump at a mean coin,
Speaker 3: right that was trading out. So anybody can create a
Speaker 3: coin of their own flavor and decide what the value
Speaker 3: is of that coin, and it's up to people to
Speaker 3: buy and sell it and keep that value flowing. Right,
Speaker 3: So that's kind of the beginning. But which have whatever
Speaker 3: platform that you're going to get your bitcoin for your
Speaker 3: you know, cryptocurrency from that's where you can transfer that
Speaker 3: money to different wallets, you know, kind of play chase
Speaker 3: the funds, hide the money from from law, enfortunate that
Speaker 3: sort of thing, and ultimately consolidated all back into a
Speaker 3: traditional bank account.
Speaker 2: So somebody, you have a couple of you all these
Speaker 2: digital accounts, and I requested, why wire me some money?
Speaker 2: Uh there are a little tiny finger digital fingerprints in
Speaker 2: there that would be able to trace it to a person.
Speaker 2: So it's not totally and completely anonymous. So how many
Speaker 2: layers of laundering then has to go on here?
Speaker 3: Uh for for you know, actually to get away with it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Quite a bit, quite a bit. I say, somebody that
Speaker 3: would put something like that together, if they just did
Speaker 3: it off the tough because they paid you know, at
Speaker 3: the end of something like this Guthrie thing, then you know,
Speaker 3: you might fall enforcement might have an easier way to
Speaker 3: trace them, you know, easier time. I mean, not in
Speaker 3: a fair way, but uh, you know, because they are
Speaker 3: not they didn't think it through right. They made a
Speaker 3: mistake somewhere. But yeah, I could take you know, if
Speaker 3: if I you know, said hey, uh get me five
Speaker 3: bitcoin and you shent me five I could split that
Speaker 3: up to be, you know, half a bigcoin here and
Speaker 3: and there's a big coin there and whatever, and spread
Speaker 3: that out to payment. But all of those would you
Speaker 3: could see those on the blockchain, which is basically you know,
Speaker 3: if you think of an old ticker tape hype, but
Speaker 3: think it's like a ticker tape floating by going by
Speaker 3: on your screen, it says, you know, this amount or
Speaker 3: one point seven big coin went from wallet A to
Speaker 3: wallet be. That's all it would show is about to
Speaker 3: randomize wallet numbers and not necessarily people's names. And then
Speaker 3: that's where the investigators have to really get busy, because
Speaker 3: now you have to go faring where have those wallets
Speaker 3: UH contacted and you're connected to in the past, What base,
Speaker 3: what what? What scryptocurrency companies have they connected to, et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera. And like I said, if somebody did their
Speaker 3: homework up front and we created all this stuff months
Speaker 3: ago and then let them go what we call dark,
Speaker 3: which means nobody's using them, nothing's happening with them, they
Speaker 3: kind of fall off the radar. Then when you go
Speaker 3: to tase me use them and law enforcement tries to
Speaker 3: trace them, then they've got no history to look at, right,
Speaker 3: there's nothing there. It's been dark for months or years
Speaker 3: or whatever in case y be, you know. And then
Speaker 3: that way it makes it mutt harder to figure out
Speaker 3: who's assigned to And by the time they do check
Speaker 3: it down, you had time to kind of wash that through,
Speaker 3: you know, wash it through a different place.
Speaker 2: So there's there's no way to flag that ahead of
Speaker 2: time that the count's active. Like you see the typical bank,
Speaker 2: you'd have to keep an eye on it all until
Speaker 2: you have to matter all the time.
Speaker 3: And you didn't know what it is, oh right, I mean,
Speaker 3: I mean a wallet address can be up to like
Speaker 3: thirty five characters long and it would just be random
Speaker 3: X Y, thirty seven, E five, you know, et cetera,
Speaker 3: and you'd have to know what that address is going
Speaker 3: to be a headed tied which you're just not going
Speaker 3: to know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, And it's I know, it's really hard to
Speaker 2: describe for those of us who aren't savvy with crypto
Speaker 2: exactly what's going on here. But you know, for those
Speaker 2: of us don't live in that world that there are
Speaker 2: different ways, as you said, multiple wallets, different block shape converted,
Speaker 2: different forms of change. If you do that enough times,
Speaker 2: does it become practically untraceable, unrecoverable it does?
Speaker 3: You know? You could you could take bigcoin and uh
Speaker 3: exchange it into Ethereum, exchange it into Solana, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And when I start filling out these names of other cryptos,
Speaker 3: I mean think about there there are thousands on a
Speaker 3: global scale, and you know, of these well known cryptos, thousands,
Speaker 3: and so I could take you know, that one big
Speaker 3: coin and bring down so minutely that in a way
Speaker 3: few to trace it. You have to you know, tase
Speaker 3: a point zero zero zero seven five three segments of
Speaker 3: Bigcoin that got transferred into Solana, that got transferred into uh,
Speaker 3: you know, Ethereum.
Speaker 2: And then different wallets on top of that. It sounds
Speaker 2: like you're totally trying to find not even a needle
Speaker 2: in a haystack, but you know, maybe just the very
Speaker 2: tip of the needle in the in a world of haystacks.
Speaker 2: It sounds almost untraceable if they're doing it right. You know,
Speaker 2: it's really early in this investigation. We also don't know
Speaker 2: exactly what the FBI knows. We never will until maybe
Speaker 2: later at some point in years and years and years
Speaker 2: from now we're still around, hopefully Nancy Guthrie is. But
Speaker 2: does it sound does this looks like like this is
Speaker 2: a lot more organized than a snatch and grab, like
Speaker 2: they put a lot of thought on this. Does does
Speaker 2: it come off as you and again we don't know
Speaker 2: anything behind the scenes here, but do you have that
Speaker 2: suspicion that this is a really well organized operation?
Speaker 3: You know, I I don't know, And I'll say it
Speaker 3: for two reasons. Well, when I know that there was
Speaker 3: some guy his name is Steves me, it's already been
Speaker 3: you know, got in trouble this week or sometimes you know,
Speaker 3: last week of a fraudulent crypto claims, right, he right,
Speaker 3: you know, and and and so obviously that idea came
Speaker 3: out and somebody started to cash in on the idea.
Speaker 3: But it also does to me like it took it
Speaker 3: took a long time to get to the crypto piece
Speaker 3: of this puzzle, you know, whereas I used my uh well,
Speaker 3: so my experience was ransomware and not necessarily extortion via
Speaker 3: happy but you know ransomware, you immediately know, hey, there's
Speaker 3: a ransom for block for crypto. You know, uh, it's
Speaker 3: right out there, communience street, pay this big coin by
Speaker 3: this day or it goes up, whatever the case is,
Speaker 3: so you know pretty quickly and if if that type
Speaker 3: of extortion or that type of organization is getting into
Speaker 3: the physical kid that being a crypto world, then you know, gosh,
Speaker 3: they were very patient, right, you know, to plan out
Speaker 3: that kid that being do it and then wait a
Speaker 3: little bit before they have throughout the whole cryptos gall show.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, it's hard to say. I mean, gosh,
Speaker 3: it feels like it's maybe maybe it's not an entirely
Speaker 3: new world for he's into all enforcement people, but you know,
Speaker 3: when they started bringing in their IT people, in their
Speaker 3: their people that trace this thing, getafe actually do flavor
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 2: Uh, it's pretty jaw dropping because you know in the past,
Speaker 2: as we mentioned earlier, it's Dave, the I T guy
Speaker 2: in the show on seven hundred Wow. He's our black hat,
Speaker 2: white hat hacking expert here on the show, and uh
Speaker 2: knows a lot of things about the deep and dark
Speaker 2: web and things, you unbelievable stuff that he's seen online.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately he's working on the good guy side of
Speaker 2: this thing, has no hand in this investigation, but it's
Speaker 2: kind of taking us through what the FBI is up
Speaker 2: against here in the ransom for Nancy Guthrie, who we
Speaker 2: presume it's still a lot of the family, came out
Speaker 2: and said, we'll give you the six million.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: It's going to be in bitcoin or etheum or whatever
Speaker 2: the digital wallet, whatever the crypto is, and it'll be
Speaker 2: converted and laundered in a bunch of different ways, making
Speaker 2: it really really hard for anyone to get traced. So,
Speaker 2: you know, typically we've all seen the heist movies where
Speaker 2: they've got duffel bags full of hundreds in jenas Jason
Speaker 2: Stadium being a badass or something like that.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: In this case, it's all digital, So you don't have
Speaker 2: that transportation issue.
Speaker 1: You don't have the physical cash issue.
Speaker 2: You rob a bank, right, they throw the bundle in
Speaker 2: that it has the tracer on or the die pack.
Speaker 2: Can can you have a digital equivalent of that? Knowing
Speaker 2: that they're going to give these people or person bitcoin
Speaker 2: or whatever it might be, can they can they fbiack?
Speaker 2: Can the Feds actually put a little bit of a
Speaker 2: I don't know, a digital fingerprint in that particular transaction
Speaker 2: or is that untouchable?
Speaker 3: It's it's not necessarily the FDI have put it there.
Speaker 3: It's more so that by default electronic guide was put
Speaker 3: them there. You know, like your computer has an ideaddress
Speaker 3: that's okay, but it also has a MAC address and
Speaker 3: that it is a fingerprint for your computer or your
Speaker 3: or anything in technology that that such is the Internet.
Speaker 3: So you know, there are different figure plants, the routers
Speaker 3: that a signal goes through, uh, leaves of drifts. So
Speaker 3: there are you know, you know lower as you said,
Speaker 3: tracing package that people can hear that you know, law
Speaker 3: enforcement could use that, all the people can use the
Speaker 3: kind of be a bigger picture. But again, if somebody's
Speaker 3: planned it out well enough, you know, it would be
Speaker 3: the same as you know, if if you went and
Speaker 3: buy yourself a house and put it under a shell
Speaker 3: corp that was owned by a shell corp owned by
Speaker 3: a shell corp, et cetera. You know, somebody can ultimately
Speaker 3: figure out that you own that house. Let's won't take
Speaker 3: them a while, and by the time they figured it out,
Speaker 3: you may not care, you know. So you know, different
Speaker 3: different analogy, but trying the same same idea as to
Speaker 3: how hard it could be. So is it impossible? Absolutely not.
Speaker 3: You know, they're the law enforcement takes down these ransomware games,
Speaker 3: you know, on an annual basis. So it happens, it
Speaker 3: gets crazy. It just isn't as fast usually as most
Speaker 3: people want it to be. But again, this kidnapper person,
Speaker 3: whatever this whole deal is, you know, not not be
Speaker 3: as tech savvy as they they they are. They might
Speaker 3: be uh scrambling or yeah, it's completely hyperbo Now they're
Speaker 3: going to mess it up and give themselves away.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, in the past, you know, we we've seen a
Speaker 2: rise in these things, largely as you mentioned, it's ransomware
Speaker 2: colonial pipeline.
Speaker 1: I just looked this up.
Speaker 2: FBI got two point three million back from that, uh
Speaker 2: and six million of the fifteen paid for the Chicago
Speaker 2: crypto case. But now now this is a high profit,
Speaker 2: high profile individual, national attention on this whole story. If
Speaker 2: this is successful, I mean, it's like a I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe a modern day version of the Lindberg baby kidnapping,
Speaker 2: right where the FBI said enough, uh, we're going to
Speaker 2: stop this. Because back in the twenties and thirties it
Speaker 2: was rampant with kidnappers or the same thing until it
Speaker 2: became a federal crime. If indeed this looks and it
Speaker 2: turns out to be successful over a long period of time, Dave, did,
Speaker 2: do you think that other people look at this and
Speaker 2: go now it opens the fund base for kidnappers?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I mean you've already got you know, kidnapped being
Speaker 3: an extortion is going on and Eastern European countries, you know.
Speaker 3: And then just like you said, this has been a
Speaker 3: high perfouer enough that you know, I watched BBC and
Speaker 3: other international channels and this has shown up on the
Speaker 3: international stage. And it may be that it's already happened
Speaker 3: in Eastern Europe at a local level where we are
Speaker 3: not hearing about it. And it could be that you know,
Speaker 3: the FBI and ANSA and whoever else has had to
Speaker 3: reach out across the pond to get some experience or
Speaker 3: to get some ideas or tips. You know, this could
Speaker 3: already be a thing that we're just in a dark
Speaker 3: because you know, typically America is behind Europe just about
Speaker 3: everything right techno from.
Speaker 1: A technology perspective.
Speaker 2: But on that I look at this and go okated
Speaker 2: In nineteen thirty two, I believe it was when the
Speaker 2: Lindberg baby disappeared as kidnapped and Charles brutal. Hopman was
Speaker 2: the one who was caught and summarily execute as a
Speaker 2: result of that capital crime. That changed federal laws. They
Speaker 2: changed right away. It became a the preview the FBI,
Speaker 2: and now you could go across state lines and the
Speaker 2: death penalty was part of this whole thing, and it
Speaker 2: stopped a lot of the kidnappings. We saw a little bit,
Speaker 2: you know, Patty Hurst back in the seventies with different
Speaker 2: types of movements, but now it looks like it's back
Speaker 2: in a crypto form. Is there anything again new to
Speaker 2: change laws to do what they did in nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: two with Lindbergh to prevent more kidnappings or are our
Speaker 2: hands tied when it comes to this.
Speaker 3: It's a good question. Again, I only played an attorney
Speaker 3: on YouTube, so I have a guest here, but I think,
Speaker 3: you know, when it comes to me being if I
Speaker 3: was an ex kidnapper and I said an email or
Speaker 3: some kind of note about ransomware as soon as I
Speaker 3: involved the if the cryptocurrency world, in my esteem, I
Speaker 3: believe that the fans already have some walls already wrapped
Speaker 3: around in place too to make that a federal currents.
Speaker 3: You know, we have that. We have that with ransomware.
Speaker 3: As soon as you do that, the fans get involved, Uh,
Speaker 3: be involved if they want to be at least so
Speaker 3: I think to some extent that that rapper is already there.
Speaker 3: But would they now, you know, the law having any
Speaker 3: catch up the technology you know that we that we
Speaker 3: see every you know, every year and every everything that happens,
Speaker 3: It wouldn't surprise me that some new kind of wist
Speaker 3: or or additional you know, adendum or something would would
Speaker 3: get looked at or something like this, especially if it
Speaker 3: just becomes effective. I really, I hate, I hate to
Speaker 3: say that I'm interested in see how this turns out,
Speaker 3: but I'm interested in how this turns out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I think we are too, because it feels
Speaker 2: like that might be hanging in the balance here.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: And the as you said, the FBI has really got
Speaker 2: their work cut out for them. He's Dave, the it
Speaker 2: guy in the Scotts Loan. Appreciate you jumping on this morning, buddy,
Speaker 2: Always great information, all the.
Speaker 3: Best, Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 2: Take care of yourself. We'll do a news update here momentarily.
Speaker 2: Weather's gonna get a lot warmer real quick. It's gonna Maty,
Speaker 2: we're gonna be walk around neked this time. Tomorrow we'll
Speaker 2: find out just how warm. Slowly seven hundred ww