Did a $500 Walmart gift card lead to a bitcoin heist?

A $500 Walmart gift card was the smoking gun that led to the arrest of a Manhattan husband and wife - the self-proclaimed Crocodile of Wall Street - in a $4.5 billion bitcoin heist.

Did cryptocurrency thieves get away with $500 Walmart gift card?

The cryptocurrency-thieving couple suspected of being involved with a $4.5 billion bitcoin heist may have gotten away with the historic robbery if it wasn’t for a $500 Walmart gift card.

Did a bitcoin cluster send a gift card to a Russian?

On May 3, 2020, a fraction of a Bitcoin was sent from the cluster to an exchange that sells prepaid gift cards. A $500 gift card for Walmart was sent in exchange to a Russian-registered email. However, according to the agents, the transaction was conducted via an IP address linked to a cloud service provider in New York.

What happened to the $500 Walmart gift card?

A portion of the $500 gift card were redeemed through Walmart’s phone app. According to the court filings, three purchases were made using Morgan’s name from one of her emails and the couple’s apartment address in New York was provided for delivery. That gift and more than a dozen other cards, for services such as Uber, Hotels.