Cops cuff 22-year-old Brit suspected of being Scattered Spider leader Spanish police arrested a person they allege to be the leader of the notorious cybercrime gang Scattered Spider as he boarded a private flight to Naples. It's the fruit of an investigation that began in May 2023 after the Los Angeles branch of the FBI requested information on the man, who hasn't yet been named, on becoming …
"There should always be due process and fair trial rights, no matter the crimes."
Interestingly, for arrests within the US and extraditing nations, the SCOTUS agrees with you and disagrees with some that think he should be shipped to GITMO.
Unlawful combatants in a war zone are substantially different from people arrested as a routine matter of law enforcement. Otherwise, all laws become optional, including the Constitution itself.
yes, it's quite convenient when you capture an 'unlawful' combatant in a -stan, having set up a regime in that -stan to make this combatant unlawful. Then you can ship him round the world and put him in a place where your own laws would make it illegal.
Now, pay me my 5 roubles, done my quota for today...
"Unlawful combatants in a war zone are substantially different from people arrested as a routine matter of law enforcement. Otherwise, all laws become optional, including the Constitution itself."
With no guidelines as to what a war zone is, nor published authority as to who in the US government can declare a 'war zone,' I think you'll find there is a wide grey area. It's wide enough where Predator drones drop Hellfire missiles on pretty much whoever they want, whenever they want to. All men are created equal under the US constitution, unless they are a 'military age male' in a 'war zone.' Then the US Constitution, due process and Miranda rights go out the window; along with their severed arms and legs.
Remember this blast from the past: "The U.S. came under heavy criticism for a drone strike several years ago against extremists in Yemen, which critics said actually hit a wedding party and killed women and children."
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/world/obama-says-u-s-drone-strikes-killed-civilians-that-shouldnt-have-been
Drone strikes today are up about 250% from that year. Many have been killed and few identified.
Not to worry. The DoJ under the Obama administration helpfully composed that secret memo that says it's fine for the President to have people murdered. That clears everything up.
(While I'll take the Obama administration over, let's say, some other past and potential future ones, it was pretty fucking rough on civil rights. As has been every administration after Carter's, really, despite the occasional win here and there.)
Just sufficient range to reach somewhere for a transfer flight would be OK.
Bearing in mind that casinos were one of the targets his time in US jails is going to be interesting. It raises interesting questions as to why Naples was the destination. Was his flight involuntary? Or are we looking at a journey to his HQ?
So, a small-time criminal is now going to spend the rest of his life with an FBI record.
Honestly, scammers. Unless you live in China or Russia, or the deepest deserts of Africa, you need to keep your head down. Because, if you start playing big, it would seem that the FBI is going to catch you. And it you play big enough, it'll be Interpol/Europol/Whateverpol.
Piss off enough money and money will be spent catching you.
And you don't have enough money to stop that.
$26M USD is pretty small in the world of cryptocurrency crime. See Molly White's site; bigger takes are commonplace.
Regarding Pascal's original post: The authorities get some of these people, true. It's hard to say what the actual risk is, because you'd have to model a lot of different factors. I have no appetite for a life of crime myself, and if I did I would, as you say, keep my head down; I'd much rather live comfortably and quietly than throw money around anyway. But considering the total take from IT crime, and presuming that a good part of it is being kept by individual criminals, I suspect that quite a few are getting away with it.
On the other hand, per Krebs, Buchanan (if indeed this was he) was in Spain in the first place because a rival gang paid for an attack on his home in Scotland, in which his mother was assaulted, and because of other physical threats. The FBI aren't the only risk.
That's why Dubai has become such a criminal paradise. It's like a 21st century pirate island. It's where the Kinahan's took up residence, it's where Dutch crime lord Ridouan Taghi laid low for years, where influencer/fraudster Hushpuppi was living the high life, where the kingpins behind a third of all Europe's cocaine import reside, and where Andrew Tate's lawyer volunteered that "Tate was definitely not going to flee to, honest guv".
If you have enough money and don't shit on your doorstep Dubai is a pretty safe place for criminals looking for a place with barely any extradition treaties.
The funny thing with cryptocurrencies is that they have such a publicly visible and immutable paper trail. It's as if all banks where to make all their transaction history since inception publicly available.
That means that finding criminals is longer limited to some well-funded law enforcement groups. Anyone can start tracing the proceeds of crypto heists from their bedroom computer and piece together who's behind which wallet.
I suspect that over the next few decades we're going to find that so-and-so who is now a big businessman, politician, media personality etc. made their first millions with some crypto scam two decades earlier. Look at how Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein were found seven years after the BitFinex heist.
Yes. After laundering, I suspect Buchanan would have managed to cash out perhaps 10% or so of that $26M. Of course, that's still a tidy sum — for someone who's ready to live a reasonably modest lifestyle. I suspect that last bit is partly what kept Buchanan in the game.
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