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Today, Business Insider reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers in connection with the attempt to sway the American 2016 presidential election. In the indictment, it is alleged that this group of conspirators used bitcoin in order to make some of the purchases necessary for their activities. The Mueller investigation claims that they were able to track some of these bitcoin transactions to tie the defendants to several of their purchases.
It is claimed that the 12 Russians used almost $100,000 of bitcoin to rent computer networks in countries as far-flung as Romania and Malaysia. With these funds, they also purchased and/or rented computer servers and VPN networks in the US in order to further distribute and obscure their identities.
By using bitcoin for these transactions they were able to cloud their true identity, but these transactions still left tracks. These faint trails, when added together, pointed to those indicated, claims Mueller. Examples of the tracks were the usage of the same computers for bitcoin payments as were used for the email hacking, domain name purchases and for the previous election-related malware activity.
It is further charged that the Russian hackers created 100s of fake IDs, social media accounts, and email addresses to order to appear like a large, unrelated and diverse number of people. People who were interested in electing one candidate vs the other. With these fake accounts, they created 100’s of 1000s of semi-automated social media posts to promote one preferred candidate and to disparage the other.
One well-publicized hacking targeted the emails of members if the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Some think that President Trump’s explicit public call on July 27th 2016 for the Russians to hack Clinton’s emails may have been a catalyst. Although these Russians are alleged to have been trying to hack the DNC for months, Mueller claims that the first attacks directly on Clinton’s email servers started on that same day as Trump’s suggestion after he wrote:
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,”
Trump later said that his suggestion was only in jest.
The indictment against these 12 include charges of 2 counts of conspiracy, 8 counts of identity theft, and 1 count of conspiracy to launder money using cryptocurrencies and bitcoin. It is important to note that no Trump campaign members, nor American citizens were charged in this indictment.
Read the full Business Insider report by Allan Smith here
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