I've read about a lot of Bitcoin Heists and Thefts: from hackers that stole bitcoin from Exchange (Due to their poor security measures) or from Bitcoin users, to scam websites and so forth.
Some of these Heists and Thefts involve huge sums of Bitcoin.
So, I was wondering: how can the hackers that had done these Heists/Thefts, be able to "cash out" the stolen bitcoin?
For example, let's say that an hacker has stolen 1000 bitcoin from Bob's wallet, and he wants to sell the bitcoin for USD (With the current exchange rate: 1000 bitcoin = $445.000), so that he will be able to "enjoy" the money in his real life. But how?
1) Obfuscating the transactions:
Thanks to the Blockcahin, everyone will be able to see all the transactions from the address (Or addresses) where the 1000 stolen bitcoin are (So Bob can try to track him down). I guess that the hacker could use a mixing service, but: can he trust the mixing service? (There is the risk that the mixing service is just a scam; or that the mixing service turns into a scam, when the hacker try to launder the 1000 bitcoin and instead of launder the bitcoin, the owner of the Mixing service just steals the hacker's bitcoin). Or probably, he has already created his own "network" of bitcoin addresses, so that he can launder the stolen bitcoin by himself? (but could this be possible to set up? Or it would require too much time and efforts?).
2) Selling the bitcoin:
Then, he has to sell the bitcoin. Where? The vast majority of Bitcoin exchange require ID verification to be able to withdraw from them (Although there are few exchange that allow their clients to have unverified accounts, but they have strict limits such as 5000 USD o 10.0000 USD yearly, for example. And there is still the possibility that the exchange, being suspicious of these transactions, decides to froze the hacker's account.)
Probably he can sell the bitcoin to other people that want to buy bitcoin, on forums and so on; but wouldn't be too risky? Firstly, the hacker will have to find a lot of users that want to buy bitcoin (I don't think that he will find a user that wants to buy 1000 bitcoin on a forum); moreover, there is the risk that the hacker gets scammed by one of the buyer. Lastly, the transactions will be displayed on the blockchain, so Bob can still track him down (if the hacker hadn't used a mixing service or something similar) and try to contact the users that have bought the bitcoin, asking them information about the hacker.
Or probably the whole thing is much easier and hacker can have a bank account or a credit card (Obtained with Fake ID) that is not connected with his real identity? In this way, he could easily sell all the bitcoin that he wants to an exchanger and withdraw all the profits from the sale.
What do you think about?