
How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not So Easy Steps - anothermouse
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/technology/how-to-disappear-surveillance-state.html
======
badideaprojects
It just all seems like cosplay. Time, expense and inconvience in order to gain
anonimity from casual twitter followers?

Will this protect him against a slightly funded and half motivated actor?
Probably not.

“Announcing Jameson Lopp as a speaker at Baltic Honeybadger 2019 Bitcoin
conference #bh2019, (link:
[https://bh2019.hodlhodl.com](https://bh2019.hodlhodl.com))
bh2019.hodlhodl.com”

[https://twitter.com/hodlhodl/status/1099286199783481350](https://twitter.com/hodlhodl/status/1099286199783481350)

Unless he is making a virtual appearance, just follow him or grab him there.

EDIT: I should make it clear I’m not just referencing the article but also the
twitter conversations I’ve seen from th author (swatting is a good reason to
take some of these steps obviously). For example,
[https://twitter.com/lopp/status/920669889064570880](https://twitter.com/lopp/status/920669889064570880).
He even comments himself in that thread “Local PD isn't going to send out the
SWAT team again without calling me first”

~~~
stcredzero
_Will this protect him against a slightly funded and half motivated actor?
Probably not._

There is a large contingent of online craptivists who won't be bright enough
or motivated enough to get to him, and the ones who are bright enough and
motivated enough will probably be more interested in other people.

 _just follow him or grab him there_

At least he's crossed the threshold of people having to do that.

"I don't need to outrun the bear. I just need to outrun you."

~~~
DonHopkins
Maybe as a bitcoin shill, he should not have crossed the threshold of people
WANTING to do that to him in the first place.

Then at least he could still stay in touch with his friends and family, and so
many people wouldn't be so motivated to extract their revenge on him.

But no, running his illegal get-rich-quick pyramid scheme and fooling and
exploiting other people was more important to him than his own and his dog's
safety.

If he wasn't just doing this for cosplay and attention, and was actually
concerned about his privacy, then maybe he shouldn't have contacted the New
York Times and had them write an article about him, huh?

~~~
byset
So your theory is that Lopp is taking these steps to protect himself from
people who want to hurt him because he talks about Bitcoin publicly and the
Bitcoin price has come down? That is wacky.

And you also claim he is a criminal who profited from an “illegal pyramid
scheme”? Does this apply to anyone who has sold Bitcoin for more than they
bought it for?

------
gumby
> To register his car, the D.M.V. insisted on a real name — not an L.L.C. —
> and a street address.

I don't understand: whose name appears on all the corporate vehicles driving
around? A security van for Google, and Amazon delivery truck, a Brinks van:
I'm supposed to think there's some employee's name on the title? What if that
employee leaves?

~~~
phlowbieuq
I feel like another unstated risk here is that if someone can get his plate
number through the DMV registration, they could buy tracking on it from one of
the large ALPR firms and deduce his home location.

~~~
gumby
This is a real risk, though it does require bribing a DMV person _and_ someone
at one of the ALPR firms.

------
chris_va
> To make sure his phone wasn’t keeping a record of everywhere he’d been — and
> potentially transmitting it to apps he was using — he turned off all its
> geolocation services.

... Of course, IMEI tracking (from tower registration) can get you pretty much
all of this data anyway. This article is more about how to partially obfuscate
your identity to private actors.

It would be interesting to know how fast a professional could unravel all of
this. Minutes? Hours?

~~~
mLuby
Satellite phone + satellite GPS would be better, right? Since money is
apparently no object…

~~~
compuguy
Satellite phones can be tracked..

------
mnw21cam
Bitcoin is the very opposite of anonymous. Permanently recorded for posterity
would be a better description. The best you can get is pseudonymous, and
that's if you never actually spend any of the coin.

~~~
Matticus_Rex
He didn't get targeted for having BTC -- he got targeted for being very public
and loud about promoting BTC.

~~~
DonHopkins
Maybe this is actually a lesson about why not to be a bitcoin shill, instead
of a lesson about how to vanish.

------
pjc50
Also quite a good checklist for money laundering. I think buying a house in
the UK now requires ID for this reason, and there's an ongoing campaign to
close the loopholes for companies.

I do remember when I was briefly the director of a tiny UK non-profit that the
company identity information was mandatory .. except for a very small list of
those who were exempt because of intimidation, after a nasty terrorist
campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences.
[https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/restricting-
the-d...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/restricting-the-
disclosure-of-your-psc-information/restricting-the-disclosure-of-your-
information)

~~~
raincom
These days, American big banks want to know who is controlling LLCs when
accounts are opened. This is due to new KYC rules.

------
cypherpunks01
This article has so little to do with Bitcoin that I think a more descriptive
title would have been:

"How a Very Wealthy Person Conceals His Name and Address From The Public"

~~~
CPLX
Wealthy maybe but not very wealthy. A very wealthy person would have many more
options. This is more of a guide for someone that has money to burn on this as
a (serious) hobby but isn't ludicrously out of reach for most readers.

~~~
cypherpunks01
I'd politely disagree, for most of the points yes, it's achievable for folks
with disposable income, however I don't think the average reader (NYT or HN)
can afford to buy 2 new homes and 1 new vehicle all in cash.

> When he found a property to buy, he used the L.L.C. and a cashier’s check
> from the L.L.C.’s bank account to pay for the house in full. A mortgage was
> not going to be possible.

> 9\. Buy a boring car.

> 10\. Buy a decoy house to fool the D.M.V.

~~~
stcredzero
_yes, it 's achievable for folks with disposable income_

People living in NC and TX generally have a lot more disposable income than
people in CA at the same gross income level. (In that sense, those other
places are more free.)

 _pay for the house in full. A mortgage was not going to be possible._

It's entirely possible for an LLC to lease property. I also know for a fact
that there are people in Chinatown who, for a variety of reasons, can't get a
mortgage, but they can get alternative financing to the tune of several
hundreds of thousands of dollars.

 _> 9\. Buy a boring car._

Very affordable. I just did this.

 _> 10\. Buy a decoy house to fool the D.M.V._

In the Blues Brothers movie, I think one of the characters had Wrigley Field
as their address. If you have friends at an organization like a church, you
could use that address.

The subject of the article did it with money. There are other people who do
some things like this through their connections.

~~~
labster
As someone who was a target of harassment just to reveal the identity of a
friend, I can assure you that using friends is not a good way to secure
information in the digital age.

~~~
stcredzero
The friend or the friendly organization needs to be prepared for the heat, and
should have _volunteered_ to face it. Volunteering a friend without their
knowing what they're in for is pretty bad, of course.

------
ilamont
I am surprised it is possible to get a corporate credit card without a human’s
name or identity tied to it.

~~~
SilasX
Isn't it tied to someone via the corporation's ownership, still?

~~~
stuntkite
A revocable trust can own an LLC. In that situation your name only exists on a
piece of paper at your house. It's extremely common to get a Nevada or
Delaware LLC with a revocable trust to protect identity. There are tons of
libertarian companies that will sell you kits to set it all up.

~~~
gubbrora
That's fascinating. How and why?

~~~
elliekelly
I'm an attorney and used to work for a bank. One of the hats I wore there was
Anti-Money Laundering Officer. We had a potential client with this type of
arrangement that went through several countries so I insisted on getting more
and more information because it seemed suspicious that someone would go
through all of that trouble unless they were doing something illegal. It
turned out the gentleman traveled internationally quite a lot for business...
and had accumulated three different families on three different continents.
His revocable trust owned several LLCs as part of a complex plan to facilitate
payments to all of his wives and children upon his death without them finding
out about one another.

I regret that I wasn't privy to his plans for keeping them apart at his
funeral.

~~~
stuntkite
What an odd moral thought experiment. I would guess this isn't exactly
uncommon for a certain class of people and even though some people might feel
revolted by it... If all goes to plan, I'm not sure that it's wrong?

My guess is that after his death it'll all just come undone with a discovery
of his master digital calendar. So many birthdays!

A probable solution to the funeral thing is that the trust is set up to
execute three funerals. Who care's what's in the urn, but it could deliver
parts of him to all the places.

------
uponcoffee
Perhaps I'm missing something, but the DMV links him to his LLC which is
linked to everything else. A quick records search on myself pulled up the
requisite registration information, so I'm left to question how anonymous he
actually is.

~~~
seanalltogether
> That would make him easy to track down if someone learned the name of the
> L.L.C. Nevada, Wyoming and New Mexico, however, don’t require corporations
> to record their owner. Mr. Lopp took advantage of that.

~~~
uponcoffee
His real identity is tied to the DMV, which ties him to the car, which is tied
to the LLC; does this not deanonymize the LLC? From the LLC you get the rest
of his large assets, namely his second house.

~~~
duiker101
How is the car tied to the LLC?

~~~
uponcoffee
> When he purchased a new car, he picked a much less flashy model, and he used
> the L.L.C. to sign the papers.

> To register his car, the D.M.V. insisted on a real name — not an L.L.C. —
> and a street address.

As far as I can tell, the car belongs to the LLC, it's not in his name, but
his real identity is a registered driver or some such to said car.

~~~
a2tech
And the address his DMV records are tied to is a crap box his LLC owns
somewhere he doesn't live.

~~~
uponcoffee
It's *not the address that matters, it's linking him to a specific LLC. If he
bought his car under the same LLC that bought the house where he lives, then
you can find him through the LLC.

If he used one LLC for car, another for the house, the point is moot... but
the article leads me to believe they are under the same LLC, hence the initial
comment.

I suppose a better question to have asked would be if there was/is any benefit
for the DMV associated car+house to be purchased with an LLC rather than
outright?

EDIT: a word

------
dnprock
It's weird to see someone publishing info about how he's concealing. I'm
hiding, here's how I did it. Perhaps, he sees an opportunity in concealing
identity business.

~~~
guillim85
He may be testing his privacy framework. If publishing it doesn't make it
weaker, it's a good framework. I guess he does not believe in security by
obscurity.

~~~
madrox
That, and it's also possible he's taken more steps than described in this
article.

------
X6S1x6Okd1st
A lot of the comments here are about how this wouldn't hold up to state
actors. I don't see anywhere that indicates that this is the goal (except for
maybe the title?)

~~~
bitxbitxbitcoin
I think it's clear that Lopp was seeking privacy from swatters and is well
aware that privacy from the government is a moot discussion.

------
jak92
Sounds good, but I suspect many of those steps won't actually work. That is,
he hasn't truly vanished, maybe to online trolls who are into SWATTING.

~~~
ghaff
It’s a continuum. There’s a lot of difference between hiding from stalkers and
online trolls and effectively hiding within a nation state that is devoting
considerable resources to find you. It’s also somewhat a function of what
you’re willing to give up to hide.

------
turc1656
I might be missing something here, but he's buying a bunch of stuff in the
name of the LLC but they aren't actually LLC expenses. Isn't that a violation
of tax law at minimum? Possibly something more serious like fraud, no? I have
a side business and it's an LLC. I know I can't just start buying cars,
houses, cell phones, etc. and claim them as business expenses.

How is he doing that legitimately?

~~~
CPLX
All you have to do is properly label any such spending as an owners draw or
disbursement. As long as you properly report any income received and don't
call personal spending a business expense you're not doing anything wrong.

~~~
turc1656
Interesting. Thanks. I guess since I keep everything perfectly separated I
didn't even know that was a possibility.

------
erikig
Final step, post it all on NYTimes!

Seriously though, the toughest part about seeking anonymity is working against
human nature and one's need for social validation.

~~~
balls187
It doesn't sound like he's shed his identity, but instead he wants to make it
so his identity can't be tracked to his physical location anymore.

------
mdtancsa
One of my fav Wired articles was about this...
[https://www.wired.com/2009/08/gone-forever-what-does-it-
take...](https://www.wired.com/2009/08/gone-forever-what-does-it-take-to-
really-disappear/)

~~~
veb
Wonderful article... but incredibly selfish. I'm pretty sure if I'd faked my
death and then later on reached out to my wife, she would murder me and nobody
would know.

------
lgregg
So, does he just never visit family and friends to maintain privacy? Sounds
lonely.

------
voidmain
The New York Times somewhat ironically won't let me read this article in
private mode. "You're in private mode. Log in or create a free account to
continue reading."

------
sunstone
I would be interested to know how he arranged his DNS service.

------
1024core
"Bitcoin evangelist": _The most anonymous way to buy things, of course, is to
simply use cash_....

Buys a house, in cash. Buys another "throwaway" house for his car, in cash.
Buys car, in cash. And then claims: " _Mr. Lopp estimates that his efforts to
disappear have cost him about $30,000._ "

Yeah, right.

~~~
Syzygies
Auto insurance is a legal requirement. My insurance company asks me to state
where my car is habitually parked, and would consider a misleading answer
fraudulent.

~~~
RandomBacon
> Auto insurance is a legal requirement.

Not in all states. In Texas, you do not need auto insurance if you can prove
you have the financial ability to pay what an insurance company would
otherwise pay.

------
arisAlexis
as typical the clickbait title implies much more than reality

