This site makes claims about powerful people, criminal markets and broken systems. You should not take my word for any of it. This page says how the work is done, so you can check it.
What counts as a source
I start from the record and work outwards.
- The primary record. Indictments and court filings from the US Department of Justice, sanctions designations from the Treasury, government reports, and the blockchain itself.
- What the subject said. Their own posts, statements and documents, quoted in their own words.
- Reporting by named outlets. Used for what a reporter saw or was told, and credited to them.
- Analysis firms. Companies such as Elliptic and TRM Labs publish research on crypto crime. When I use their findings I say they are theirs.
Every factual claim links to where it came from, at the point where I make it. The longer investigations also end with a numbered source list. I open every link before a post goes out. When two sources disagree on a date or a figure, I follow the primary one and say so.
Reading the blockchain
Some of these investigations follow money on a public ledger. The Tronscan links in those posts go to the transfers themselves, with full addresses, so you can walk the same trail.
A ledger shows that money moved: from which address, to which, how much and when. It does not show who owns an address. Names come from somewhere else: a court document, a sanctions list, or a company that tags addresses for a living. I say which one each time.
What the careful phrases mean
The wording is deliberate. Read it literally.
- “Arkham labels it.” Arkham is a private company that tags blockchain addresses with the names of who it believes controls them. The label is Arkham’s attribution. It is not a confirmation from the exchange or person named, and it is not mine.
- “A deposit address.” An address an exchange gives to a customer for paying money in. Money arriving there went to an account at that exchange. It does not mean the exchange took part, or knew.
- “Alleges”, “charged”, “accused”. A prosecutor’s claim. Not a verdict.
- “No wrongdoing is alleged.” The name appears on the trail and no document I have found accuses them of anything. I say so to stop you assuming otherwise.
- “Estimate.” A figure from a model or a calculation, with the source named. Not a count.
What I don’t do
I work from material anyone can reach. I don’t break into systems. I don’t pose as a victim or a buyer, I don’t contact the people I am writing about under a false name, and I don’t send money to them.
I describe the steps so they can be repeated by hand. I don’t publish the scripts.
Pictures
Photographs of real people come from public-domain sources and are credited. Header images are illustrations made for the post with AI assistance, in tools such as Blender. They are not photographs of the events. Words that appear inside an image are sourced like any other claim.
After a post is published
Pages vanish. A weekly check tests every outside link the posts cite and asks the Internet Archive to keep a copy of any page it does not already hold. When a link dies, I swap in the archived copy.
Corrections
If I get a fact wrong, I fix it in the post and add a dated note at the foot saying what changed. Typos and broken links get fixed without a note. I don’t delete posts to hide a mistake.
Found an error? Tell me. A correction with a source attached gets fixed fastest.
Tools, including AI
I use AI tools to find leads and to help make the pictures. A lead is not a fact. Nothing a tool tells me goes into a post until I have read the source it rests on. The conclusions, and the mistakes, are mine.
