Recovering stolen bitcoin: a digital wild goose chase

[ghosh]

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/09/recovering-stolen-bitcoin-sheep-marketplace-trading-digital-currency-money

[gcb0]

starting from a single compromised wallet, how difficult it is to follow all the ramifications until you end up with branches with that sum?

even if you end up with one coin per wallet, you just found all the wallets the thief created or people/exchange that he used to off load it...