Tom Caliendo is a cryptocurrency investigator for a private company. In his role, he focuses on global security matters, including foreign espionage, sanctions evasion, and cyber threats. Caliendo previously spent two decades at the NSA and CIA, where he saw firsthand how open-source and blockchain intelligence could complement traditional collection.
In January, two alleged cybercriminals got into a contest.
While speaking in a Telegram channel, Dritan Kapplani Jr. asked John Daghita to go “band for band,” meaning he challenged him to show how much money he had in his crypto wallets.
Daghita accepted and eventually piled $23 million into a single wallet. That bit of braggadocio was Daghita’s downfall: cryptocurrency investigator ZachXBT used the trail of transactions to unmask Daghita as the person who allegedly stole $46 million in crypto from seizure wallets managed by the US Marshals. The twentysomething was arrested on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin in March.
ZachXBT is an elite crypto investigator, but the core techniques used to trace transactions and analyze wallets can be used by anyone. Given the widespread use of crypto and how it intersects with scams, criminal activity, and global finance, it’s essential for every investigator to at least know the basics of how crypto moves and how to dig into transactions and activity.
This guide provides:
Essential information that you need to know about crypto in order to investigate it.
Fundamental crypto investigation techniques.
Free tools for cryptocurrency investigations and how to use them.
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