The Australian Federal Police (AFP) announced the successful decryption of a coded cryptocurrency wallet backup, unlocking AUD 9 million (USD 5.9 million) in digital assets. AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett lauded the effort as “miraculous work,” crediting a data scientist within the agency who has earned the moniker “crypto safe cracker.”
The breakthrough occurred during an investigation into a suspected “well-connected alleged criminal” believed to have amassed cryptocurrency through the sale of “a tech-type product to alleged criminals.” AFP investigators discovered password-protected notes on the suspect's mobile phone. Subsequent examination revealed an image containing a seemingly random sequence of numbers and words, Barrett explained.
The numbers were organized into six groups, featuring over 50 different combinations. The AFP digital forensics team concluded that the data was likely connected to a cryptocurrency wallet. The suspect allegedly refused to provide the decryption keys, an offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison under Australian law.
“We knew if we couldn’t open the crypto wallet, and if the alleged offender was sentenced, upon release he would leave prison a multi-millionaire – all from the profits of organised crime,” Barrett stated. “For our members, that was not an acceptable outcome.”
One of the AFP's data scientists recognized that the suspect had attempted to create a complex obfuscation method. To decode the 24-word seed phrase, the data scientist deduced that the first number from each sequence had to be removed. This process unlocked the wallet, revealing assets valued at $5.9 million.
The data scientist noted that “some of the number strings felt wrong and they looked like they were not computer-generated.” He further elaborated that these strings “looked like a human had modified the sequence by adding numbers to the front of some sequences.”
This is not the first successful crypto recovery for the AFP’s digital forensics team. In a previous case, the same data scientist was instrumental in recovering over $3 million in digital assets using a different decoding technique.
In both instances, the confiscated cryptocurrency was seized by the AFP-led Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce. Should the court order the forfeiture of the funds, the assets will be deposited into a Commonwealth account and redistributed by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke to support crime prevention initiatives.
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