Who is the ‘Bitcoin Kid:’ inside the largest cryptocurrency theft by one person in history

A major crime occurred in February of 2020 in Hamilton, but few of us had any idea it happened and why.

The victim, a billionaire in California, looked at his cell phone to discover he had been locked out, meaning someone had taken control of the phone.

As shocking as that might have been, even more troubling was the fact that more than $45 million worth of cryptocurrency that he owned had been yanked from an online wallet where he held those funds.

Josh Jones, the victim of this theft, was an early pioneer investor in cryptocurrency, specifically Bitcoin.

It’s a decentralized digital currency that allows people to transfer funds from one person to another anywhere in the world, so long as they too are on the Bitcoin network.

People like Jones are often referred to as a “whale” amongst the crypto community, a name given to those who hold large quantities of crypto.

Jones may not be the biggest whale in the sea, but he’s rich and was well known in the crypto space. As in most crimes, the bigger and more well known you are, the bigger a target you become.

After discovering his phone had been hacked and he was missing those hefty funds, Jones reached out to police in Los Angeles, where he lived.

A major investigation, which eventually involved the F.B.I. and U.S. Secret Service, was launched.

But Jones decided not to leave it all up to investigators. He also made a post to Reddit, an online forum with a big audience made up of crypto investors.

Jones pleaded for help, asking anyone who might have any knowledge on who hacked his funds and in the hopes of stopping any future transactions draining his money, but it was too late.

When it comes to Bitcoin, all transactions where wealth is transferred takes place on a system known as the blockchain.

It’s a public ledger which records all Bitcoin transactions in chronological order and while these transactions are public, the people participating are kept anonymous.

One of Bitcoin’s main attractions is anonymity. Each person is assigned a public I.D., made up of a series of letters and numbers and is seen on the ledger.

The blockchain itself is very secure and tough to corrupt or hack. As for Jones, he noticed his funds were being transferred, the problem was he couldn’t figure out who was doing it. Given the speed of the transfer process, this can be very difficult to find out.

Meanwhile, over 500 kilometres north of Jones’ home, detectives who weren’t even part of the initial investigation began to get inundated with tips about the theft.

At the time, Detective Samy Tarazi was working for the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT) in Santa Clara County California, a task force that investigates cyber crimes and was eventually assigned to help crack the case.

Santa Clara County is home to Silicon Valley, home to Google, Apple, and a number of other major tech companies. The REACT team was well known across the globe for solving past crypto thefts so tipsters often went to them to report crimes.

In the upcoming “VeraCity: The Bitcoin Kid,” you’ll find out about the one tip in particular that lead investigators to their main suspect: a teenager who lived in Hamilton, Ont.

What happened next is a cat-and-mouse game that ended in dramatic fashion, including for hearing for the first time one of the major players involved in the Bitcoin heist.

To date, only a fraction of the $45 million has been recovered. Find out what happened to the rest when “VeraCity: The Bitcoin Kid” premieres on Sunday, Jan. 29 at 10 p.m. ET on Citytv.