Criminal’s Brother Swipes $5m Bitcoin Back From Darknet Seizure

Come listen to the story of Gary Harmon, brother to convicted Helix Dark Web Bitcoin mixer founder, and how he stole over $5m of Bitcoin law enforcement previously seized from Larry! This is eCrimeBytes.com S 2 Ep 7-2 Criminal’s Brother Swipes $5m Bitcoin Back From Darknet Seizure – Act 2: Meet Gary Harmon, Larry’s Brother.

Please check out the previous acts for the background:

Criminal’s Brother Swipes $5m Bitcoin Back From Darknet Seizure – Act 1: Helix, A Dark Web Bitcoin Mixer

Sources:

Transcript:

00:00:10:00 – 00:00:29:24
Keith
Hey, welcome back to eCrimeBytes. Season two Episode seven This is about Gary and Larry Harmon. They ran Helix, which was a Bitcoin mixer slash tumbler. Depends on which terminology you like to use, but I’m going to probably say mixer throughout.

00:00:29:24 – 00:00:40:00
Keith
Well, they had this bitcoin mixer on the dark web to help people anonymize their transactions from buying drugs or whatever else it is that they’re buying that they shouldn’t be

00:00:40:00 – 00:00:40:07
Keith
in.

00:00:40:07 – 00:00:54:18
Keith
Act One, we took you through Helix. We introduced you to Larry. Larry was arrested, but we found out that Larry had this Trezor wallet that the FBI was unable to pull Bitcoin off of.

00:00:54:18 – 00:01:08:03
Keith
They said this in a hearing, two hearings and then they released Gary. They still haven’t had the Bitcoin in their hand. They didn’t release him.

00:01:08:06 – 00:01:18:17
Keith
The government didn’t release him willingly. It was the, you know, the Court that released him. They still don’t have the crypto in their hands. But

00:01:18:17 – 00:01:33:06
Keith
Gary has entered the picture and he knows that the government doesn’t have it. And that’s where we’re going to walk in at this point. So Gary James Harmon is brother to Larry Harmon and he lived across the hall from his brother.

00:01:33:08 – 00:01:50:06
Keith
So imagine at least what I imagine was sort of like an apartment complex or condominium. And it’s literally like rich, successful brother is on one side and less successful brother is on the other side. And you say, why do you say that?

00:01:50:06 – 00:01:57:24
Keith
So Gary, the brother, the guy we just introduced you to, works for Larry, his brother.

00:01:57:26 – 00:02:30:17
Keith
And in the court paperwork it said he made about 45 to 70 K a year working for his brother. So you know he’s not a Bitcoin millionaire is where you got to put him in your mind at this point. He’s not a cryptocurrency miner that’s making millions of dollars like James Zhong was in our first episode of the season, James. He was also at points on unemployment and he lived a very modest lifestyle and they’re both from Akron, Ohio.

00:02:30:22 – 00:02:43:03
Keith
Now, I do have a picture of Gary and that I’ll put on your screen at this point, and you go, Holy shit, he’s sitting in a bathtub full of money. And that’s absolutely right. He is.

00:02:43:05 – 00:02:46:02
Seth
And those were singles, by the way, not get too excited.

00:02:46:04 – 00:02:52:06
Keith
Well, I do get excited because it’s $100,000 worth of singles, my friend.

00:02:52:08 – 00:02:52:22
Seth
Touche!

00:02:52:27 – 00:03:12:17
Keith
It. So so you will see a little bit north west of Gary’s head. It’s actually a very scantily clad woman because this is in a nightclub. And I will tell you from information we’re going to show you later on that it was $100,000 that was thrown around in this nightclub. It’s pretty impressive. And this is actually came from the DOJ paperwork.

00:03:12:17 – 00:03:20:25
Keith
I that was pretty awesome. This is the picture I used in our thumbnail for this episode. If you wonder why he was sitting in money, it’s just this whole celebration that they went and did

00:03:20:25 – 00:03:36:18
Keith
so in April 2020, same timeframe where we left you off. Gary used Larry’s Trezor pass phrases to recreate the wallets that law enforcement physically seized from Larry.

00:03:36:20 – 00:04:09:03
Keith
So it’s physically sitting in a locker in Washington, D.C. but because Gary had the passphrase, he could recreate the cryptocurrency on a brand new Trezor wallet just as if he had the original. So remember, we were talking north of 4000 Bitcoin originally, the Trezor wallet that Larry had. Gary wasn’t real greedy. He only transferred about 712 Bitcoin, which is about $5.3 million.

00:04:09:06 – 00:04:14:10
Keith
He could have transferred the whole 4000 bitcoin if he wanted to,

00:04:14:10 – 00:04:21:29
Keith
and there is a text for that. So after this transfer happened, this comes later because we have the court paperwork.

00:04:21:29 – 00:04:33:13
Keith
He is actually said in text. He says drunk and moved way too much. And I’m going to warn you, Seth, he spells just as bad as Jason Leidel here.

00:04:33:16 – 00:04:38:27
Keith
He misspells too, But it gets worse. Trust me, and

00:04:38:27 – 00:04:59:18
Keith
he expressed concern about, you know, doing the money transfer while intoxicated, he said. And this is the part I love. He responded. You know, later on saying, I’m the only one with the passphrass. And that’s drunk for passphrase, apparently. And I have the whole text phrase here for you and for video viewers.

00:04:59:18 – 00:05:11:17
Keith
I’ll put it up for you right now, and I’ll just read the whole tax exchange for you. He says, drunk and moved way too much. He spells too wrong. And then it looks like

00:05:11:17 – 00:05:23:13
Keith
the person responds, says, Yep, shut up. And then he responds, We’ll talk later. And then the person responds, You better not drive drunk. And then Gary responds, I won’t.

00:05:23:13 – 00:05:28:00
Keith
And hop to God, which is a misspelled for hope to God. Remember, he’s drunk.

00:05:28:00 – 00:05:34:20
Keith
He says, I won’t. And hop to God I won’t. I’m the only one with the passphrass.

00:05:34:22 – 00:05:40:11
Seth
Can we get passphrass? Is our new like word for any kind of you know, password that’s for.

00:05:40:12 – 00:06:06:25
Keith
Yeah, exactly. But make sure you get the passphrass right. And so we talked about the subject wallets earlier on, and this isn’t a chart of all the subject walls. This is the chart of the subject wallets that Gary touched that I’m putting on the screen for the video viewers right now, which is eight of the 16 and this is straight out of the court paperwork that I’m showing you in there is basically the number of Bitcoin that were sent.

00:06:06:25 – 00:06:25:27
Keith
And what the value was at the time that they were sent. And remember, Bitcoin is appreciated exponentially since then. So at the end of the day it was 712 Bitcoin and it added up to almost $5.4 million.

00:06:25:27 – 00:06:49:23
Seth
All right. So we learned that while they live near each other and they had the same name essentially Larry and Gary, they did not see eye to eye. The court documents state that the defendant had been, as in Gary, have been conducting peer to peer sales of Bitcoin for cash on behalf of Larry Harmon, the defendant demanded a higher percentage fee, but Larry refused.

00:06:49:25 – 00:07:18:13
Seth
So in response, the defendant physically attacked Larry, pinned him against the wall and choked him. Lovely. Two other witnesses, we don’t know their names, one of whom later interviewed by federal law enforcement back in 2020, independently confirmed the same incident in which the defendant choked Larry. The witness, another witness, describe the defendant as a Tasmanian devil when he has been drinking.

00:07:18:15 – 00:07:25:25
Seth
So we note that the summer of 2020, the rest of Gary’s family turns on him because they think he stole the money from Larry.

00:07:25:25 – 00:07:44:09
Seth
So now it’s late 20, 20, early 2021. Gary now has money. So the court documents tell us that corresponding to these efforts to launder the 712 Bitcoin through online mixer services, the defendant’s financial situation became a dramatic transformation.

00:07:44:09 – 00:08:14:27
Seth
Bank records show that they now began making thousands of dollars in unexplained cash deposits into his bank account in late 20 and early 21. The unexplained cash deposits are consistent with the defendant engaging in peer to peer sales involving the missing 712 Bitcoin. So in early January of 21, the defendant deposited a $52,000 check with the notion notation, rather crypto in the memo line, further supporting the conclusion that he was selling Bitcoin in exchange for us dollars.

00:08:14:29 – 00:08:24:07
Seth
The defendant use the proceeds of the crypto check to purchase a 2018 Audi S5 Nice car.

00:08:24:09 – 00:08:43:17
Keith
Yeah, we actually had the check. It was in the court, the court paperwork, and I just thought it was fucking hilarious because like I’ll describe it for the audio listeners, but it looks like a check that you would write to somebody. All the important parts of redacted, like all the, the router account numbers, routing information, all that stuff.

00:08:43:19 – 00:09:06:05
Keith
But his name is there. Pay to the order of Gary Harmon it’s $52,000 and right down in the goddamn memo line he writes crypto so it’s like he could just written you know theft or crime or something down there like it was he put in the memo line what it was for. Like they didn’t have to do much investigation on this check, I imagine.

00:09:06:08 – 00:09:22:13
Seth
No, they did not. So records obtained from the cryptocurrency exchange, Bittrex show that the defendant opened an account in late January, January 30th, 21, using a protonmail our favorite email address. So

00:09:22:13 – 00:09:32:27
Seth
between February 5th and February 8th, 21, so only three days, the defendant deposited another 26 and a half bitcoin into his account. This was valued at almost $1,000,000.

00:09:32:27 – 00:10:03:24
Seth
It’s $983,000 at the time of the transaction. So keep in mind between like 2012 and 2021, the value of Bitcoin went bananas. So on February 12, 2021, the defendant used the majority of his bitcoin deposits to purchase. Holy shit. $16 million essentially in Dogecoin, an alternative cryptocurrency. Well, let me take a step back. 16 million Dogecoin, right? It was technically 16,079,260.67 blah blah blah.

00:10:03:26 – 00:10:08:24
Seth
So I don’t remember what Dogecoin was trading at. At that point though.

00:10:08:26 – 00:10:22:18
Keith
No. And he didn’t stop there. And they have records from a cryptocurrency finance company called Blockfi and I believe Blockfi is going to come up in the next couple of episodes as well. I’ve seen their name a lot.

00:10:22:18 – 00:10:34:20
Keith
They showed that defendant Gary deposited approximately 67 Bitcoin into a new Blockfi account in 2021, March 25th of 2021.

00:10:34:20 – 00:10:41:16
Keith
At the time. This is valued at more than 3.5 million. It’s insane amounts of money, isn’t it?

00:10:41:16 – 00:11:14:21
Keith
So Gary used his Protonmail address to register the Blockfi account, then 65 almost 66 Bitcoin of that transfer was used as quote unquote loan collateral for a loan to the defendant. Meaning, Gary, in the amount of $1.2 million, he used this one point or at least a portion of the $1.2 million to purchase a luxury condominium unit in Cleveland, Ohio.

00:11:14:21 – 00:11:25:10
Keith
And I’m wondering if that’s where they lived across from each other. Seth, maybe it was a luxury condominium. So that’s why I had that picture when I was telling you earlier about the two brothers living across from each other.

00:11:25:10 – 00:11:26:03
Keith
All right.

00:11:26:03 – 00:11:26:19
Keith
So

00:11:26:19 – 00:11:34:24
Keith
the one thing I want to highlight to you is I showed you this picture of him sitting in a bathtub of money, and I cracked a joke and I said, That’s $100,000.

00:11:34:25 – 00:11:58:15
Keith
You probably were like, How the fuck did he know that? Well, it’s because in the court paperwork they have an itemized list of what this guy spent at one night at a nightclub. I’m going to say nightclub here because nowhere in there did they say strippers or anything like this. But based upon the picture and based upon the wording, that’s kind of what it sounds like.

00:11:58:15 – 00:12:15:06
Keith
So what they say is he got the whale room number 206 for 5 hours. And I don’t know what the fuck the whale room is. It’s probably means somebody with a lot of money. But right there, I imagine, like fat dude. And I’m like, I never even if I have a lot of money, I never want to be called.

00:12:15:06 – 00:12:17:04
Keith
No, because it’s horrible.

00:12:17:04 – 00:12:39:17
Seth
It’s so I don’t know exactly what the whale room is, but I know there was a great song that came out years ago by Chris Rock called No Sex in the Champagne Room, and I’m pretty sure it’s the same thing. That’s a private room. Not that I’ve ever been to one, but had I ever been to a strip club, there’s a private room where you can pay extra dollars and you have more individualized attention and higher price.

00:12:39:20 – 00:12:40:01
Seth
But

00:12:40:01 – 00:12:48:11
Seth
there is no sex in the champagne room. So I’m assuming the whale room is in is on the spectrum of champagne room style rooms.

00:12:48:13 – 00:13:09:19
Keith
Well, in the whale room, he is paying for 5 hours, $25,000. See, I’ve never rent a room like this. I don’t know if this high or this is low to me. I’m going, Holy shit, $25,000. I could buy a car for that much. So the money didn’t stop there, right? He That’s just the room you have. The dancers.

00:13:09:19 – 00:13:31:04
Keith
The dancer fee alone was $15,000. Holy shit, Seth. I don’t know what these dancers do, but they must be the best goddamn dancers on earth for $15,000. Because that’s $3,000 an hour. That’s a lot of fucking. That’s. That’s more than a high priced attorney. I mean, $3,000.

00:13:31:06 – 00:13:33:24
Seth
That’s a lot more. I mean, yeah, yeah, it’s.

00:13:33:24 – 00:13:37:10
Seth
But there’s no sex in the champagne room. Never forget that.

00:13:37:13 – 00:13:53:07
Keith
There’s a 10% fee on top of that. So the grand total is actually $16,500. And you go, Holy shit, he’s dropping some coin. Nope, nope. The lion’s share of the coin he drops is $100,000 worth of singles

00:13:53:07 – 00:13:59:01
Keith
which actually costs you over $122,000.

00:13:59:01 – 00:14:29:21
Keith
That means getting the singles cost at least $22,000 on top of this. And I guess that’s just how high rollers roll Seth. So one other thing I want to point out is he’s a he’s a high roller. Like I said, people notice, okay, Blockfi at one point says, Hey, motherfucker, we are putting a stop to your account because this looks like Darknet market or ransomware shit that you’re doing here.

00:14:29:24 – 00:14:46:29
Keith
And we actually have the email that they sent to him when they closed down his account that I’ll put on for the video listeners here. But if you’re a technical person like me, I thought this is pretty interesting because they kind of cluster the computers in the bottom of the email. A lot of times you see that when you

00:14:46:29 – 00:15:01:18
Keith
see like data science type of analysis of these type of problems where they tried to match fraud, to different types of activity and I thought was pretty interesting that they actually slapped it right in there in the email and

00:15:01:18 – 00:15:03:03
Keith
I’ll actually read what they say.

00:15:03:03 – 00:15:30:23
Keith
They say, thank you for being a value blockfi client. We have detected your deposit on March 25th, 2021, as having close exposure to a darknet market and ransomware. Such a source falls under Blockfi prohibited uses. Please be more mindful of your deposit sources in the future. If you believe you’ve received this recording in error, please provide proof of deposits and like how they’re just kind of naturally.

00:15:30:25 – 00:15:33:25
Keith
Please be more mindful of your deposit sources in the future.

00:15:33:25 – 00:15:57:06
Keith
And so Gary gets more nervous at this point. You know, we have him texting people just about his anxiety where he says in a text message, anxiety just went through the rough and you’re like, Keith, you just fucked that up. No, I didn’t, he said anxiety just went through the roof, meaning roof, but spelled wrong.

00:15:57:06 – 00:16:24:12
Keith
and then his friend says about what and Gary says just blowing money bring too much heat to me. And of course, spells to incorrect the whole time. And I’m telling you, listener, if you’re not if you’re not as anxious as Gary right now, you better be because we’re ending in Act two and we’re getting ready for Act three where Gary’s caught because Gary, he’s a high roller.

00:16:24:12 – 00:16:50:03
Keith
You knew he was going to get caught probably sooner rather than later. So if there’s anything in this act that you like, please, please give us a like give us a subscribe, whatever application you’re on. If you’re on Apple Podcasts specifically, please give us a five star review. Just say something nice in there that specifically helps drive us up the charts and about half of our audio only listeners come from Apple Podcasts.

00:16:50:06 – 00:17:13:22
Keith
If you haven’t, visit our website. Please do is just e Crime bytes dot com spelled e c r i m e b y as in yellow milk t e s dot com. And if you wonder why I’m saying y as in yellow milk, then obviously you just have joined us on the second season and not the first because we have a whole thing about yellow milk in one of our episodes.

00:17:13:22 – 00:17:25:12
Keith
So stick around. We will definitely recap it at some point and talk more about yellow milk. So with that, please do come back for Act three. Gary is caught.

DrKeithJones.com

Criminal’s Brother Swipes $5m Bitcoin Back From Darknet Seizure – Act 2: Meet Gary Harmon, Larry’s Brother

Sources:

Transcript:

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