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Early Bitcoin Adopters Facing Extortion Threats

Posted by timothy on from the when-the-ethos-is-malice dept.

An anonymous reader writes Wired recounts the story of Hal Finney, one of the very first adopters of Bitcoin. Finney died earlier this year after a long fight with Lou Gehrig's disease. But for months before his death, he was a victim of constant harassment from somebody trying to extort his Bitcoins. He and his family faced a variety of threats, and had a SWAT team called on their residence. And it turns out Finney is not alone — other early adopters are being targeted with similar threats. "That's when someone using the names Nitrous and Savaged hacked into [early adopter Roger Ver's] email accounts and demanded that he cough up 37 bitcoins—about $20,000 at the time—in order to prevent his private information from being published online. Ver refused, and the hacker apparently backed off after Ver put a 37 bitcoin bounty on his head. Ver, who was himself sentenced to 10 months in federal prison for illegally shipping explosive across state lines, believes that Savaged is not only the same person who swatted Hal Finney, but also the person who gained access to Satoshi Nakamoto's email account earlier this year."

5 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Still can't believe by Kobun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That swatting is a thing. How can it be that a single, anonymous phone call is all it takes to deploy a militarized police team to your front door? It blows my mind. That it keeps happening over and over ... ugh.

    1. Re:Still can't believe by Cigarra · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because police departments have all this budget and military gear and they're itching to use it?

      --
      I don't have a sig.
    2. Re:Still can't believe by TheCarp · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That assumes they even are "departments". Here in MA swat teams are private companies, which seems to have gone unnoticed until someone tried to file FOIA requests for information about how often they are deployed; and they refused to answer.

      Because of course, knowing how often and why they are deployed is only reporting to the public on exactly what we pay them for, its not something the public has any right to know or anything.

      --
      "I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
  2. Take a pack of Black Cats camping by raymorris · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you go camping and take a pack of Black Cats with you, you may have just illegally transported explosives. Details matter.

  3. Re:Told you so by sanvila · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Euro, is very spendable, mostly stable.

    Then you've never watched it's 25%+ fluctuations up and down over the last 10 years.

    You can't measure the stability of a currency just by comparing it to your own currency. If we followed that line of reasoning, the only stable currency to you would be one which is pegged to the US Dollar. The price of one Euro fluctuates if you measure it in Dollars, yes, but that does not speak against the stability of the Euro more than it does against the stability of the Dollar.