Neo-Nazi Bitcoin History Hints at Russian Darknet Link

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Hatewatch identified Anglins transactions through software created by a company called TRM Labs, which specializes in analyzing cryptocurrency transactions. TRM Labs claims with a high degree of certainty that in 2016, Anglin paid money to a Russian darknet site that deals with hacked personal data, drugs, ransomware, stolen credit cards and money laundering . Hatewatch could not determine exactly why Anglin transferred currencies to the apparent darknet site highlighted in TRM Labs analysis. He did not respond to an email requesting comment on the findings published in this story.

Anglin, a neo-Nazi known for leading Internet harassment campaigns against women, blacks, Jews, and Muslims, among others, issued Bitcoin payments in July and August 2016. At that time, Anglin produced a deluge of propaganda promoting Donald. Outweighs the presidential campaign. (Anglin voted for Trump that year by mail-in ballot from the southern Russian city of Krasnodar.) The Southern Poverty Law Center successfully sued Anglin for $ 14 million for the terrorist campaign he organized against Tanya Gersh, a Jewish real estate agent based in Montana whom he targeted. via his website in December 2016. Anglin has been in hiding from the public in recent years and has so far not passed judgment against him.

Promoting the darknet to a generation of extremists

Anglin and his Daily Stormer contributor Andrew weev Auernheimer have been promoting the darknet among the site reading community for years. By darknet, Hatewatch refers to a layer of the Internet that is only accessible through Tor, a peer-to-peer web browser that allows users to be anonymous. In an age when usually only those with money can get online privacy, activists are supporting Tor as a way to protect their identities from those looking to steal data or create damage. Anglin and Auernheimer seek anonymity through Tor to help them engage in profascist activism without outsiders detecting their activity, which often involves triggering online harassment campaigns. Anglin advocated for its readers to download and use Tor in August 2015, explaining how to bypass software that blocks IP addresses.

We already know how to handle IP blocking. We’re just using Tor, Anglin wrote in this article, encouraging readers to troll a comment section. Download and use the Tor browser. It is very simple. Comment on the best stories until you get banned, reset Tor, repeat. The Android version of Tor also works great, if you want Troll on the go with your smartphone.

Tech companies like GoDaddy and Google originally provided web services to the Daily Stormer, but they severed ties with the hate site in August 2017 following the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., Promoted by Anglin. Anglin and Auernheimer moved the Daily Stormer to more than a dozen different domains in the months that followed, often using a darknet address as the permanent home for the site at times when readers could not access it on the web. clear, where most internet activity takes place. (Anglin sometimes calls the light web a normal web for its readers.) Anglin wrote a personal blog entry on August 25, 2017, calling for sites to switch to the darknet.

One of the early supporters of cryptocurrency

Anglin adopted the cryptocurrency a few years after its availability and today operates at least 200 Bitcoin addresses. In addition to the addresses he uses to solicit donations, many other addresses are created as a by-product of his long history of using cryptocurrency. Whenever Bitcoin holders receive the change in blockchain transactions, that change is kept at a new address. Hatewatch determined that Anglin frequently combined coins from its change addresses with coins held in its known donation addresses in order to make new payments.

Anglins’ transaction history also stands out for the money it holds compared to other extremists, its transaction volume and its apparent interest in websites that traffic illegal goods, stolen data. and money laundering, according to TRM Labs software. Hatewatch determined that Anglin traded for at least $ 1,144,648 worth of Bitcoin in total on 6,147 transactions, 4,790 in and 1,357 out, over a six-and-a-half-year period, based on what the TRM software Labs found.

We have long been prohibited from operating in the normal financial system. As early as 2014, we were banned from PayPal and credit card processors, and switched to Bitcoin, Anglin wrote of cryptocurrency in a February article.

Hatewatch found a series of transactions involving an address known to belong to Anglin on December 24, 2014, which marks its first known use of the Bitcoin blockchain. On that date, two unidentified Bitcoin users sent Anglin four successive payments of 0.008814 BTC each. (White supremacists place symbolic meaning on the numbers 14 and 88.) A few hours later, on the same date, someone also sent Anglin a payment of 0.04 BTC. The person who sent the payment also made several transactions with white nationalist Don Black, according to TRM Labs software. (Black, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, created the Stormfront White Supremacy Forum and invested in Bitcoin early on.) Hatewatch contacted email transactions at Stormfront, the Blacks website, but no one has answered.

Anglin then spent Bitcoin on sites that TRM Labs associates with darknet services. In the summer of 2016, Anglin made payments to what TRM Labs reports as a Russian darknet website. He paid approximately $ 19.68 on July 3, 2016, $ 31.74 on July 19, 2016, and $ 15.04 on August 6, 2016, according to TRM Labs software. Around the same time, Anglin transacted addresses on the Bitcoin blockchain that TRM Labs associates with trafficking in money laundering practices. In cryptocurrency parlance, these mixing services allow multiple users to combine their coins to hide their precise destination. TRM Labs reported that Anglin started receiving payments from users through mixing services in October 2016 and continued until January 2020.

Daily Stormers move to Monero

Today, Anglin no longer solicits donations of Bitcoin on its Daily Stormer website, but instead encourages readers to donate Monero, a privacy-focused coin embraced by the underworld. Designed to hide transactions from public view, darknet market buyers spend theoretically untraceable Monero tokens to evade law enforcement scrutiny. For this reason, Hatewatch can only analyze fragments of Anglins cryptocurrency history at this time, with a focus on payments it has made or received through known Bitcoin wallets.

Every Bitcoin transfer is publicly visible, Anglin wrote in February about the transfer of donations from Daily Stormer to Monero. Usually, your name is not directly attached to the address, but the spies of the various Awakened Anti-Freedom organizations have unlimited resources to try and tie these transactions to real names. With Monero, transactions are all hidden.

Private security firm CipherTrace claims to have developed the ability to trace Monero transactions on behalf of law enforcement, according to an August 2020 statement on their website. CipherTrace notes in its statement that 45% of darknet markets now transact in Monero, making it the second most used cryptocurrency for such transactions behind Bitcoin.

Russian darknet services, American crimes

An example of the type of Russian darknet site that TRM Labs suggests that Anglin may have paid for is uniccshop.ru, which the Department of Justice (DOJ) described as part of a transnational criminal organization when it ported cybercrime charges against 36 related individuals. in February 2018. A man by the name of Andrey Sergeevich Novak was operating the Unicc.ru site at the time Anglin made the apparent payments. Novak used the aliases Unicc, Faaaxx, and Faxtrod while participating in an obscure group known as the InFraud Organization, which claimed millions of lives in all 50 states and around the world, contributing to more casualties. $ 530 million per hack and data theft, according to the indictment. Hatewatch has contacted the DOJ for an update in the case against Novak and comment on Anglins’ apparent use of darknet markets and is awaiting a response.

Law enforcement has also cracked down on Bitcoin mixing services in recent years. Federal authorities arrested Roman Sterlingov, the administrator of a website called BitcoinFog, for money laundering in April. Hatewatch reached out to the Internal Revenue Service for comment on Bitcoin Mixer Service users and an update on the Sterlingov case. If they respond, Hatewatch will update this story.

Photographic illustration by SPLC

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