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Taiwan police successfully caught a counterfeit money dealer with the help of ChatGPT, an AI chatbot known for writing articles, summarizing information, and translating. It seems that now ChatGPT can also assist the police in catching criminals.
According to a report by Central News Agency on Monday (28th), the Kaohsiung police in Taiwan recently used ChatGPT to help write programs and successfully cracked a case of “counterfeit money laundering.” The main suspect of the fraud group has been captured.
The Kaohsiung prosecutor’s office stated that in February of this year, a job seeker’s bank account was used for money laundering, and within a month, there were abnormal cash flows reaching tens of millions of Taiwanese dollars. The police later discovered a money laundering operation, with a cash flow of 150 million Taiwanese dollars, and the main suspect was a 35-year-old man surnamed Yu.
However, after investigation, the police found that Yu had been studying loopholes in blockchain and foreign transactions for years. Although blockchain wallet addresses are similar to bank accounts, they appear as a combination of alphanumeric characters on the internet and have anonymity, making them difficult to trace.
Therefore, prosecutor Lu Shang-en, along with two police officers, started self-studying programming languages and used ChatGPT to debug and obtain records of fraudulent transactions.
According to SET News, Detective Zheng Yu-cheng, who participated in the investigation, revealed to the media that they wanted to try whether this AI system could help with the case when ChatGPT became popular. At that time, the cryptocurrency exchange had already provided data, and the police gave instructions to ChatGPT and made requests, asking it to help with debugging and even design an “EXCEL program with specific options.”
Through the collaboration of the prosecutor, the detective, and ChatGPT, the police finally understood the pattern of the fraudulent group’s transactions and successfully caught the main suspect, Yu.
With cryptocurrencies being exploited for money laundering, Taiwan police have started learning related knowledge.
The Kaohsiung prosecutor’s office cracked a nearly 100 million Taiwanese dollars money laundering case last year by analyzing blockchain transaction records and eventually identifying a 35-year-old man surnamed Sun as the mastermind. He used books on money laundering prevention to learn about vulnerabilities, allowing the illicit funds to change hands layer by layer, using cryptocurrency transactions to disguise the cash flow.
Since the birth of Bitcoin, the blockchain industry has continued to develop. Although its initial purpose was “decentralization,” its anonymous nature is often used as a means of money laundering. Therefore, the police have started learning blockchain-related knowledge to deal with new types of crimes.
The Taiwan High Prosecutors Office has established a virtual currency cash flow analysis team, and its members have obtained the original certification of Chainalysis Reactor, a blockchain coin flow analysis tool. The Kaohsiung prosecutor’s office has also collaborated with well-known forensic companies, adopting the “multi-signature wallet” technology of blockchain. Through layered authorization and mnemonic sharing, the police can better secure confiscated items after cracking cryptocurrency fraud cases.
Further reading:
Southeast Asia – A Hub for Cryptocurrency Scams? UN Report: Hundreds of Thousands of People Sold and Coerced
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Crypto City
Proofread by: Gao Jingyuan