CMC News

Australian Police Crack Coded Wallet, Recover $5.9M

#Australian Federal Police successfully decoded a #cryptocurrency wallet containing $5.9 million after a data scientist deciphered a complex numerical sequence. AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett credited the breakthrough to an analyst known within the agency as a “crypto safe cracker.”

Law enforcement discovered password-protected notes on a suspect's mobile phone during an investigation into an alleged criminal who accumulated digital assets by selling tech products to other criminals. The device also contained an image with random numbers and words arranged in an unusual pattern.

The numbers appeared in six groups with over 50 possible combinations. The AFP digital forensics team determined the sequence could relate to a #crypto wallet after analyzing the pattern. The suspect refused to provide his wallet keys—an offense carrying a 10-year penalty under Australian law.

Barrett emphasized that allowing the alleged offender to leave prison as a multimillionaire from organized crime proceeds was unacceptable. The data scientist noticed that the alleged criminal had created a booby trap in how the numbers were presented, attempting to obscure the actual seed phrase.

Cracking the 24-word seed phrase required removing the first number from each sequence. The analyst explained that some number strings appeared wrong and looked like they were not computer-generated. Those sequences seemed to have been modified by a human who added numbers to the front of certain strings.

This marked the second successful #recovery for the AFP's digital forensics team. The same data scientist previously helped retrieve over $3 million in #digital assets using a different decoding technique, demonstrating the team's growing expertise in cryptocurrency investigations.

The Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce, led by the AFP, seized the funds in both cases.