Bitcoin Bandits

By Chris Kale

585,000 Bitcoin gone. 

Hacked in an instant.

The BitX cryptocurrency exchange is one of the biggest in the world, and when the Bitcoin goes missing from it, Thomas Merten gets an email to investigate. 

Thomas is a specialist contractor for the SEC, working cases to find lost money, but never cryptocurrency. 

And when the lead programmer of the exchange ends up tortured and dead, the mystery takes a darker twist. 

Knowing nothing about crypto, if Thomas is to solve this case, he may need help… 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crimson Cro Publishing
• Release date: Feb 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393231455

Book preview

Prologue

Seoul, South Korea

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On a warm summer night in the bustling city center, the well-known programmer Joon Chang-Min, better known in the cryptocurrency world as ‘Bob June’ dug his fingernails into the Persian rug toward his balcony. He left a crimson trail of blood behind him.

High up in a penthouse surrounded on two sides by the clean glass of a high-reaching tower, the light of the pale moon peaked through rolling, dark clouds. Within the penthouse, tidily cleaned and decorated with fine, mid-century modern leather couches, the lights were dim, reflecting off glass tables and marble countertops in the kitchen in the corner of the room.

As he crawled hand over hand away from his attacker, slowly taking strides after him, Bob June took big, gasping breaths as he bled from his side. Joon Chang-Min was young—perhaps old for a programmer of that caliber—twenty-two. Born in Seoul, he spoke fluent English since he was a child. His black hair was pulled back in a ponytail with both sides of his head shaved. He wore thick, black glasses and was known to wear XXL T-shirts on his thin frame.

The only light came from three wide computer monitors on a glass work-table in the center of the penthouse. The glow from them cast blues, greens, and oranges into the room. In front of the monitors lay two keyboards, one a black PC keyboard, and the other a faded, white Mac one. Next to them lie an empty gas-station Code Red Mountain Dew with its top removed, and its straw lying on the floor. Along with it were a pair of Burger King wrappers, both empty and crumpled.

The large man creeping behind Joon, rasped, What did you do with it? Where is it?

Joon still inched his way toward the balcony door, with the moon seeping through the clouds. . . . What needed to be done.

The attacker, a man who Bob June had known for months now, was bald and broad-shouldered. He almost had a bodybuilder physique, but more agile—and with tattoos running down his neck and arm. Bob knew he was a military man turned mercenary before he’d moved to their company. His dark eyes glared at Joon as he lumbered toward him with a barbaric knife in his hand; a military knife that looked more like a prop from a Rambo movie than anything a soldier would use—but Bob June knew better than that as the knife was now dripping in his own blood.

I’m not fucking around here, Joon, the mercenary said, through teeth nearly clenched. You cheated him. You didn’t follow the plan. Now tell me where the crypto is.

Joon coughed; blood spattering onto the gray tile. He reached up with his bloody hand shaking and managed to unlatch the door. He didn’t respond to the bald man wielding the bloody knife. He gritted his teeth as he slid the glass door open with a smooth rolling sound. The winds from that high up whooshed into the room.

What’re you gonna do? Jump? the bald man asked, now with his black, thick-soled boots on both sides of Joon’s legs. It's simple. You tell me what you did with the Bitcoin, and I let you live. Easy as that.

I know better than to trust a man like you. Joon inched his way onto the cement balcony. Even if I gave it to you, I know you’d still kill me. But please, let me go. I don’t want to die. But. . . He coughed again into his fist. ". . . I can’t give it to you. It doesn’t belong to you, or him, or me. It belongs to them."

You can spout that ideological shit all you want. The mercenary grabbed Joon by the back of the shirt, pulling him back into the penthouse. Joon fought with all his strength, yelling for help, but the bald man tossed him back into the room. Joon landed next to his computer desk. He sat up, clutching his side, wheezing with panicked eyes.

He glared up at his attacker. I’d rather die than betray that principle. Crypto isn’t just about money. It's about freedom.

The bald man laughed then; a hearty laugh that came from deep in his chest as he clapped his hands. Bravo. Very righteous of you. His laughter then stopped, his brow furrowed, and his tone went sour. Where is the crypto? Give me the seed.

Joon felt an explosion of pain in his side as the steel-toed tip of the bald man’s boot slammed into where the knife wound still bled, breaking his ribs. He let out a loud cry of pain, that finished with an angry snarl.

The bald man bent, grabbed Joon’s hair and looked straight into his eyes. The mercenary’s eyes were dark like a black mamba’s. They looked like the eyes of death to Joon. You’d rather die than tell me what you did with it? the bald man hissed. You die for money?

Joon coughed up more blood, and his face crinkled at the top of his nose as he felt the surging pain in the side of his chest. I told you, this is about more than money, and you lied. You all lied. It was never supposed to be like this. I’m doing what I have to do, but you can still let me go. You don’t have to do this. If you kill me, you’ll never find it. It may be lost forever.

I don’t believe you. The attacker gripped Joon’s hair tighter. I bet I could find any hacker who’d be able to crack your code. They could find where you hid it. I just need your wallets.

A burst of dull laughter came from Joon’s lips then, filling the room, alight in a green and blue glow in the darkness. You know nothing about the way it was designed, do you? The odds of you cracking a seed are so minuscule, it’s almost zero. You are a fool—all muscle, and no mind.

I’ll take my chances with another hacker, the bald man said. Give it to me, and this will all be over. You’ll wake up in the hospital, and all this will have been like a bad dream. . . a nightmare. He held his hand out with his palm upturned. The wallet, and the seed. . .

Joon closed his eyes, took a deep breath, as if weighing the choice laid out before him. As he opened his mouth as if to speak, he opened his eyes, and spat a string of mucousy-blood onto the man’s hand. I’ll never give it to you, he said. It's not for you. There’s too much power in it, for a son of a bitch like you to take.

The bald man shook his hand, flinging the blood onto Joon, and wiped his palm on his shirt. Then he stood, with his silver belt buckle nearly next to Joon’s face. He flashed the knife in front of his face, its sharp tip and serrated back inching past his nose. A Glock 19 was still holstered in his belt on his right hip.

Have it your way, the bald man said. There were only two ways this was going to work out. Those were my orders. Just know that you chose this.

You don’t have to do this, Joon said. You can let me go, deep inside you know I did the right thing. Surely, even someone like you can find the heart to know that.

You give me too much credit, the man said lowering the knife to Joon’s abdomen. I have no heart.

Chapter One

Kansas City, MO, USA

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In a mid-sized apartment halfway across the world from Seoul, a man sat at his wooden desk he’d had since the eighties, enjoying a splendid, calm afternoon.

Kansas City could be a confusing place for people who’ve never been there. It was one of the only places in the country where a big city was separated into two states. He lived on the Missouri side, in a quaint neighborhood known as Columbus Park. The buildings were almost completely fashioned of old bricks, had one of the old Italian staple restaurants of the city, and now had a vibrant Vietnamese population. Not to mention some of the best Pho in the city.

Thomas Merten sat in his leather office chair, with the warm afternoon sunlight sifting through the vinyl blinds lining the window in front of him. The desk was a polished dark hardwood seven feet long, with a newer HP computer shoved off into the corner. The black keyboard looked slightly dusty. The desk was organized neatly, with a single pen held upright by a stand with a wooden base. The pen had an American Flag with a gold outline on its side.

Thomas brushed his graying, tan hair back. It wasn’t long enough to cover his eyes but would stick to his forehead when the sweat came. He flipped on an ugly, round, fading white fan. The rest of the room was ordained with a half-dirty pair of Levis draped over the back of a high-back, gray-cloth chair. A twin mattress with a blue duvet lies in the corner of the room.

Two posters from the movies, The Outsiders and The Fugitive, hung on the white walls. The poster of the first was the iconic shot of seven of the hottest celebrities from the eighties, each in black, denim jackets or sleeveless tees. It was a Francis Ford Coppola picture for god’s sake, of course it had a star-studded cast; Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze and Ralph Macchio just to name a few!

The film was based on the novel by S.E. Hinton, and Thomas felt it was one of the few books he’d read where, the movie wasn’t ‘better.’ But he didn’t mind the adaptation. He enjoyed the whole idea of ‘greasers,’ and the classist symbology that carried. When Thomas was younger, (he was born in the late seventies), he even wanted to be one of the greasers, and be an Outsider. That’s before he grew up though, and got the old J-O-B.

The Fugitive wasn’t so much like the old Coppola classic. . . Its poster had Harrison Ford, in his middle-age years, running next to a subway car that was moving so fast it was a blur of light, with only a window visible. The tag-line was perhaps what Thomas liked most about the poster though—it read;

A murdered wife.

A one-armed man.

An obsessed detective.

The chase begins.

Thomas never had to chase anyone through a subway in his line of work, as they did in the movies.

Stretching out nearly the entire length of the table was a cylindrical fuselage of thin metal. Around it was placed a nose cone, parachute, padding for recovery, custom-cut metal fins and the engine mount.

Thomas built rockets, but not the cheap ones a boy scout would build at camp. No, he built head-high sized rockets with custom-built engines. These rockets were so big, and went so high, Thomas thought he was probably on some list somewhere by the FBI or FAA. He had to go far out into the country to shoot these babies off.

A normal rocket you might buy for twenty dollars online may go up two-thousand feet, if built correctly. Thomas’ rockets had a maximum altitude in the ten-thousand feet range—high enough to be considered dangerous for some aircraft. He’d never shoot one of his rockets into the sky with helicopters flying around, and he knew he was breaking the law, but hey, you gotta live a little sometimes.

If he wasn’t on a list for firing off illegal rockets, he most assuredly was on a list for the materials required to build the engine. Thomas built mini, directional bombs that created the lift for the rocket.

He took the parachute, a green, thin plastic that he’d cut and sewn himself in an octagonal shape. He’d already sewn the suspension lines into its corners and had folded it up neatly before setting it back onto the desk. Running his fingers along the smooth metal of the fuselage, he said to himself, Nice. I think a gold paint will do for you.

Outside the window a jet flew high in the clouds, leaving two long lines of ‘steam’ behind them. He sat back in his chair with his arms folded and he laughed to himself thinking about the conspiracy about chemtrails.

I don’t trust our government more than any other true patriot, but I sure as hell don’t see the point in a government poisoning their own people. Idiots. . .

That did give him enough of a spark of curiosity to power on his computer. He scooted his chair over to it and a blip of light flashed across the computer screen. He entered his passcode—apple—after one of the stocks he’d purchased that had created enough interest for him to live off comfortably after the divorce. He also enjoyed the irony of that password on a machine running Windows.

I wonder if I’m on a list for that too.

Thomas had left the computer with the standard desktop background that came with Windows, casting a nice blue hue off the screen. He moved the mouse over the Google Chrome icon, ready to read some nut’s theories about chemtrails, but an alert popped in from the bottom right section of the screen. Seeing the sender and subject of the e-mail made him move his mouse to it quickly, and he took a deep breath before he clicked on it.

Shit, he said in a gruff voice. I don’t want to go back to D.C.

The e-mail popped open, and Thomas knew just by the sender they were looking to bring him back to work. The sender was Wyatt Smith, more of a friend now than a colleague. It was amusing to him the title Wyatt had at the bottom of his e-mails. It called him Associate Director of the Office of General Counsel. What the hell is general counsel?

A more appropriate title for Wyatt would be something like—Director of Investing Fucking Crooked Bankers.

He had to enter his secret twelve-digit ID number to get the details of the e-mail to appear. He entered it in, and the short e-mail’s contents were unveiled.

It read:

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Dear Thomas,

---

Yesterday, an enormous hack took place in the east. Billions of dollars were stolen off one of the largest exchanges of its type in South Korea. I know you’re not thrilled to travel on long flights, but this is a big case. Knowing you, you might want it though. Let me know soon, because I wanted the best for this one, it’s coming from the top that this one needs to get dealt with quickly.

One more thing, and you might like this or not, but it's not a traditional exchange. It's a cryptocurrency exchange, it’s called BitX. Not sure if you’ve heard of it or not, but it’s grown from zero to a huge investment fund in less than a year.

Give me a call and I’ll fill you in on the details. And yes, you’d have to come back to D.C. for this one.

---

Wyatt Smith

Associate Director of the Office of General Counsel

[phone]

100 F Street, NE

Washington, DC 20549

---

Cryptocurrency? Thomas said. I don’t know anything about that stuff.

Chapter Two

Underneath the northern side of the vast Olympic Bridge sat a black BMW two-door sedan. The bridge, at its center, had four legs that mounted up to a high point, resembling a torch with a sort of twirling wicker at its top that is supposed to depict the Olympic fire.

In the early morning glow of the rising sun, the BMW was filled with the sounds of heavy metal music, the band—Mastodon. Blazing dual guitar solos and double-kick drums echoed as the man stared at a collection of USB-looking drives in his hand—ten to be exact. The bald man had left Bob June’s condo after rummaging throughout the entire apartment.

Joon had kept all the drives in a drawer in his computer desk, not a very secretive place. Each one had a hinge that could fold out a cover that would reveal the USB male end. All the drives had a digital screen on the side of them, where the amount of cryptocurrency held on each would be displayed—once your password was correctly inputted. The man knew these drives were the most secure way to keep crypto, these drives are known as ledgers, the only other safe option would be a paper wallet.

The bald man with the blue eyes had a thin black shirt on, had a tattoo of a knife on his throat, and had cauliflower ears—a common symptom MMA fighters would get from getting punched or kicked too much. He tossed the ledgers onto the passenger seat’s black leather and clicked down the volume of the music on the steering wheel as he looked out at the reflection of the sun on the Han’s choppy water from the boats and ferries moving along.

"Call him," he said in a gruff voice in the car.

Calling him, the car replied.

The phone rang three times from the speakers, then with a click, the ringing stopped.

Niklas, the voice of a man said from the speakers, from the slight accent it was notable that English wasn’t his first language.

Yes, it’s me. Niklas scratched his head.

Well? the man said.

I visited him, but he wouldn’t give me the seed. I found his drives, but I don’t think he’d be stupid enough to keep the seed phrases or any paper wallets written in his apartment. He probably wrote them down somewhere else, a lockbox of some sort, or with a friend. I doubt he gave anything to his family.

What was his state when you left him? the man asked.

Messy, Niklas said.

The man on the other end of the phone call sighed. That’s not what I asked you to do. Another sigh. "Well, we’ll just have to figure out a way to move forward. We have to find that Bitcoin. I agree he wouldn’t have left it on a ledger right next to his computer. He must have used a paper wallet. My people have located where the Bitcoin was moved to, but we need that seed phrase. Find his friends or family if you need to."

I’ll go through his cell phone records to see where he’s been the last couple of days, Niklas said. Shouldn’t be tough. With any luck, we’ll find the lockbox.

Again, the man on the other end of the line sighed. Goddammit, Joon. . . Goddammit. . . Have you seen the market cap since the incident?

Yes, Niklas said. A thirty-five percent drop in Bitcoin’s market cap alone. The alt coins are following it down.

Investors are scared, the man said. We’ve got to get that Bitcoin, and soon. . .

I’m just buying more. Niklas smiled.

This isn’t about a couple of Bitcoin, the man snapped. I’m not trying to get you a deal on your personal crypto portfolio. This is about the entire market!

Sorry, sir.