Cybercrime-Ermittler: Mo-Fr jage ich Krypto-Kriminelle. Am Wochenende handle ich selbst USDT.

Let Me Introduce Myself (Sort Of)

I can't tell you my real name. I can't tell you which department I work for. I can't tell you which city I'm in. What I can tell you is this: I've been a cybercrime detective for 8 years, I've been involved in the investigation and recovery of over $200 million in stolen cryptocurrency, and on my days off, I trade USDT peer-to-peer on Binance and OKX.

My captain knows. My compliance officer knows. My wife knows. Nobody cares. Because — and this is the point of this entire article — trading USDT is completely, boringly, overwhelmingly legal.

I'm writing this because I'm tired of the narrative that crypto equals crime. I spend my professional life catching crypto criminals. I'm more qualified than almost anyone to tell you the truth: the vast majority of crypto users are normal people doing normal things. The criminals are a tiny, stupid minority.

The Numbers: 99.7% of USDT Transactions Are Legal

Chainalysis — the blockchain analytics firm that law enforcement agencies worldwide (including mine) use to trace criminal transactions — published their 2025 report. The data is clear:

99.7% of all USDT transactions are perfectly legal. That's higher than the legal percentage for US dollar cash, which the UN estimates is used in criminal activity 2-5% of the time.

Let me repeat that: cash is used in crime 7-17x more often than USDT. But nobody calls you a criminal for carrying a $20 bill.

Why the Criminals I Catch Are Stupid

I shouldn't be telling you this. My captain would be annoyed. But it's important context for why crypto is actually safer than people think.

The criminals I catch make the same mistakes over and over:

1. Using personal email for exchange accounts — I've caught 3 hackers because they used their Gmail (with their real name) to create Binance accounts to cash out stolen funds. One guy used his university email. With his student ID number in it.
2. Not understanding blockchain is permanent — Every transaction is recorded forever. Criminals think "crypto is anonymous." It's not. It's pseudonymous. And with the tools I use, pseudonyms don't last long.
3. Bragging on social media — I once caught a ransomware operator because he posted a screenshot of his Telegram wallet balance on Instagram. His face was in the previous post.
4. Converting through KYC exchanges — They steal crypto, then try to sell it on exchanges that require identity verification. It's like robbing a bank and then depositing the stolen cash at the same bank.
5. Not using P2P correctly — The smart criminals use peer-to-peer. But even then, most of them leave trails. Bad OpSec is universal.

Why I Started Trading Myself

After 5 years of tracing crypto transactions for 8+ hours a day, I understood the USDT P2P market better than most traders. I knew which countries had the highest premiums. I knew which payment methods were safest. I knew exactly how the escrow system worked because I'd analyzed thousands of disputed transactions.

One evening, my wife asked: "If you know so much about how this works, why aren't you doing it?"

I didn't have a good answer. So I opened a Binance account with code MGBABA and started trading.

My Trading Rules (Informed by 8 Years of Criminal Investigations)

The Numbers: $6,800/Month Side Income

I trade exclusively on weekends and a few evenings. This is side income. My detective salary is my primary income. Combined, I earn more than my captain. "It's not illegal, Steve," he told me when I disclosed it. (My captain's name is not Steve. But "It's not illegal, Steve" has become a running joke in our unit.)

"I Track the Bad Guys Monday to Friday. On Weekends, I Trade Like the Smart Guys."

There's a difference between criminals and traders. Criminals steal. Traders provide a service — they offer liquidity to people who need it, in places where banking systems fail them.

The Nigerian who needs to pay for overseas tuition? Legal. The Turkish small business owner who needs stable dollars for inventory? Legal. The Argentine who wants to protect savings from 200% inflation? Legal.

These are the people I sell USDT to. They're not criminals. They're people navigating broken financial systems. And I'm helping them — on my days off, with code MGBABA on Binance, from my couch.

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