An Australian police officer has been indicted and is currently undergoing court proceedings for stealing cryptocurrencies linked to a drug trafficking investigation, per local media reports.
The accused cop, William Wheatley, allegedly stole 81.616 BTC from a crypto wallet identified during a joint investigation by the Australian law enforcement authorities into drug and steroid trafficking via the country’s postal system in January 2019.
Sergeant Deon Achtypis, a Detective from the Australian Cyber Crime Squad involved in the investigation, revealed in court documents that his team uncovered information related to drug orders and Bitcoin transactions on an encrypted email service and a Trezor-brand hardware cryptocurrency wallet.
According to court documents, Detective Achtypis reportedly explained that after his team got the approval to access the crypto wallet, they discovered that 81.616 BTC had been transferred to another account shortly after the wallet device was identified. However, they could not figure out the motive behind this action.
At the time of the transfer, the stolen tokens were valued at $450,000, but with Bitcoin’s current price surge, they are now worth over $6.3 million.
In 2021, investigators reopened the case after tracing the transfer to associates of the drug trafficking ring. Suspicion arose when one of the tracked IP addresses led back to the Australian Federal Police headquarters in Melbourne, prompting further scrutiny of potential police involvement.
The authorities contacted Craig Gillespie, a cryptocurrency investigator, to conduct additional investigations. According to reports, Gillespie’s investigation revealed that several transactions between January and April 2019 were conducted using a different wallet linked to the original investigation. He was able to trace 28 transactions, and some of them were directly connected to Wheatley’s bank account.
Wheatley is currently facing a committal hearing in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court and is charged with theft, using property suspected to be the proceeds of a drug crime, and misusing the information to his own benefit.
The Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity first charged Wheatley in December 2022 following the investigations.
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