Aussie federal police officer accused of stealing 81.5 Bitcoin (BTC) during raid

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Reportedly federal agent William Wheatle transferred 81.62 BTC from a Bitcoin wallet under their own possession without any court order secretly.

This is a very old story about a drug raid. In 2019, Australian police raided a house in an illegal drug dealing case and found a crypto hardware wallet. 

As per the report, federal police officer William Wheatle secretly transferred total funds which was 81.62 BTC to his crypto account on the Binance crypto exchange. 

The police department was not allowed to access the funds of that crypto wallet without a court order. After three weeks of formalities of the court order, the police department found that the wallet was empty.

As the funds were transferred after the raid timing, it was believed that the drug dealer accessed his funds from another crypto wallet using his wallet phrase backup keys. 

After an investigation by Detective Sergeant Deon Achtypis, it was found that the IP address which accessed the funds from the raised crypto wallet belonged to federal agent William Wheatle. 

However, the accused federal police agent denies all these allegations but all the facts & evidence are pointing fingers toward Wheatle.

The worth of the stolen fund in 2019 was only $309,000 but at the current trade price, it is $4.2 million. 

This report shows a clear picture that corruption can be prohibited easily with the help of cryptocurrencies, as these are decentralised as well as traceable via the use of perfect tracking software. 

Over the past few years, the adoption of crypto transaction tracker software surged rapidly among the enforcement agencies of the countries.

Also, In this case, investigators used crypto-tracking software, otherwise it was not possible to find the thief. 

In Aug 2023, Canadian police announced that they started using crypto tracking software Chainalysis Reactor to trace illegal crypto transactions. 

In 2023, nearly $2.61 billion worth of crypto assets were stolen by the bad actors but with the help of such crypto tracking software enforcement agencies successfully recovered $674.9M. 

Read also: FTX’s legal counsel faces a lawsuit action over involvement in FTX crypto fraud