Could someone explain to me how he got caught?
Apparently, by being stupid. See https://lemmy.zip/comment/6851063
In essence, he got caught because he traded a certain amount of bitcoin for Monero and then traded a similar amount back? Wouldn’t converting to Monero stop the trail right there? Would converting from Monero to Bitcoin in smaller quantities have helped him evade the authorities? How did using bitcoin let them track him?
What would people do if they want to pay in crypto but the service only accepts bitcoin?
Finnish investigators from the National Bureau of Investigation (KRP), with the help of Binance, followed the trail of payments to Kivimäki, who exchanged the funds for Monero and then exchanged them back to Bitcoin.
What probably happened is that he extorted Bitcoin from a known entity, then he went to Binance and traded that Bitcoin for Monero, then sent a similar amount of XMR to Binance to exchange again for BTC thinking he was covering his tracks.