We managed to reach the top of the criminal organization in the first phase of the operation, thanks to the tracking carried out by Reactor, something we would not have been able to achieve with these members in the traditional way of breaking bank secrecy.”
Challenge
When cybercriminals stole funds from a city hall in Santa Catarina, Brazil, Lead Investigator Eduardo Graebin faced an investigation unlike any they had encountered before. The stolen funds had been converted to cryptocurrency and moved through complex blockchain transactions designed to hide the perpetrators’ identities.
For weeks, investigators attempted to trace the cryptocurrency movements manually, but the technical complexity and global nature of blockchain transactions left them at a standstill. Traditional investigative methods and banking protocols were insufficient for tracking digital assets across multiple blockchains and international exchanges.
Solution
The investigation took a dramatic turn when Chainalysis offered the Santa Catarina Civil Police a proof of concept for their blockchain intelligence platform, Reactor. Despite having no prior blockchain expertise, investigators found the tool remarkably intuitive.
When officers discovered seed phrases written on paper, they used Wallet Scan to instantly recover the wallets and scan dozens of blockchains for any fund movements.
Results
Using Reactor, the investigation team traced the stolen cryptocurrency from the initial wallets to 16 different exchanges across the globe. The platform’s ability to see through the criminals’ obfuscation techniques proved crucial – investigators could identify the actual recipients of the stolen funds, not just the front men used to hide their identities.
During Operation BitTrack, the team also employed Chainalysis’s Wallet Scan tool during search warrant executions. This led to Santa Catarina’s first-ever seizure and transfer of cryptocurrency during a search warrant execution, recovering approximately $2,000 in Bitcoin to an institutional Civil Police wallet.
The results also validated Reactor’s accuracy: four of the tracked suspects already had criminal convictions in different Brazilian states for computer device invasion, account hacking, criminal organization, and money laundering.
