Australian police crack coded wallet, seize $5.9M in crypto

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) successfully cracked a coded cryptocurrency wallet backup holding $5.9 million (AUD 9 million) after a data scientist within the agency deciphered a complex numerical sequence found on a suspect's phone. The suspect, an alleged criminal who stockpiled crypto by selling a tech product to other criminals, refused to provide the wallet keys, an act punishable by 10 years in prison. The AFP digital forensics team found password-protected notes and an image containing random numbers and words, divided into six groups with over 50 combinations, which they suspected related to a crypto wallet. The data scientist realized the alleged offender had created a "crypto booby prize" by modifying the sequence; he decoded the 24-word seed phrase by removing the first number from each sequence, as some strings appeared human-modified. This was not the first success for the AFP's digital forensics team, as the same scientist previously helped recover over $3 million in another case. The seized crypto is held by the AFP-led Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce, and if confiscated by the court, the funds will be used to fund crime prevention.

(Source：Cointelegraph)