Humility & Bitcoin: Tales from the CEO's Desk

Take my hand, and join me on a journey through the non-purchase of Bitcoin

in·ep·ti·tude

noun: ineptitude; plural noun: ineptitudes

lack of skill or ability." the officials displayed remarkable ineptitude"

If there's one thing you hope your CEO won't be, it's inept. But it's inevitable. 

Ever rubbed elbows with government officials, high-level security officers, academics? In a certain environment, it can be humbling. I've been humbled. I've also looked those fine folks in their joyless eyes and thought, "Oh, you're really no smarter than my uncle, who crushes Keystones and jailbreaks iPhones for fun." 

You can look great in a suit and be a brilliant strategist but crumble during conflict—and maybe cheat on your wife. You can hack into any system on the world wide web and struggle to make sense of Ed Sheeran's lyrics. You can run a country and be a felon—allegedly.  

People are good at what they're good at. Then, they have their flaws, clumsinesses, blindspots. Being a bit moronic isn't unique or interesting. It's an inevitability of the human experience. I have some talent when it comes to speaking and writing, but if you ask me what 7x6 is, I'll look at you slack-jawed and ask you to hold my hand while I exhaust the hamster wheel that is my brain. Don't even bother sending me data visualization in graph form if you're not in the mood to answer 18 follow-up questions or listen to me cry. 

We're not built to do all things. 

In a business like Permanent Record Research, "CEO" is really just a generous way of saying "woman who says yes or no to people who will probably do what they want anyway." And I'm cool with that. I love these unruly buffoons, running around shirtless and sticking their tongues out at me when I say "stop." It works for us because we all work for and with each other.

Which is why when MJ asked me one morning if I could go on a hunt for him, I said yes with bells on. 

This is where we meet our friend, *ineptitude. Understand that I'm not an investigator. By nature, I'm a researcher, but my main role is to take the work of talented, seasoned investigators and construct narratives around their findings. But there's work that needs to be done before stories can be told and before you can attempt to apply a real-world understanding to quantitative data. 

The task MJ had for me was fairly simple—"Find this guy." 

The guy in question had a reputation for scamming kids out of money through multiple channels. A lot of money.

OK, MJ, that's it? Find this guy with nothing more than a single photo? I'm a millennial. I've been doing full background checks on my friend's Tinder dates with just a first name and one photo for a decade. I was made for this.

We jumped on a quick call. MJ gave me the details and left me with an encouraging parting sentiment—"He's young, you're younger than me. He operates in spaces you're more familiar with. Go forth and prosper." Easy, understood. 

I took my measly information—one username from a now deactivated profile and one grainy photo—and did what all good investigators do, grab a CZ (Coca-Cola Co., can you sponsor us? Our monthly Coke Zero expenditure is getting out of hand), my comfiest sweat pants, and plopped down in my finest leather chair. 

"An hour," I thought, that's all it'll take. 

Despite knowing that reverse image search would be my closest friend in this circumstance, I started with preliminary searches of the username. Call it delayed gratification. Though I kept over a page of notes, I turned up very little—mostly confirmation that this guy was certainly trying to hide and was, for all intents and purposes, pretty damn good at it. 

When I'd exhausted our OSINT tools, and every page of Reddit, Google, and YouTube, I turned to the image search. 

But allow me to flirt with an anecdote before we devour the search for our scammer.

I'm an LGBTQ+ content creator, which is a polite way of saying I make little comedy videos that other lesbians and queer women might like. And I've been lucky that those little videos resonate enough for me to have a genuine audience. This also means my DM's get slammed, and no, not in a fun way. Spam, and Christians. You know what they say: there's no hate like Christian love. But about a year ago, I had an influx of seemingly real DM's from seemingly real accounts. Meaning they were populated, there was true engagement, and followers, which requires a time investment not often seen by online scammers. 

When I received a message from one of the accounts, I was intrigued. There was that light lingering scent of something sour, but it was indiscernible. Account seemed as real as mine, conversation was smooth and engaged, not robotic or disconnected. She wasn't asking for anything or trying to connect too deeply. 

I went back into that hidden folder of my DM's and found an account that messaged around the same time. It was all similar. Account, conventional. Message, personal. I replied back to her, too. A few hours later, a reply. I carried on conversations with both simultaneously. Natural, flowing conversations with normal pauses and no distinct tells. Two days in, I reverse image searched both people. On the first two image-searching platforms, I received no results. But my instinct nagged at me, so I went to a third. 

Hits. Tons of them. I followed the hits back to what were definitely real Instagram and Facebook accounts—large enough followings but with content and audiences that never would've intersected with mine. These were great identities to adopt—the accounts were populated with endless photos and videos to use. Both these women were non-English speaking, far removed from North America, and both highly successful career women with husbands and children. They were also from countries where being gay would be, well, not chill. Not chill at all.

I sent links to the true accounts to the imposters. One immediately blocked me. The other sent a vague message about curating blackmail material to use against the real woman. It would've been an unsophisticated, juvenile and difficult plot to pull off. Still, should it have worked, should they have been able to amass large swaths of evidence that these wealthy women were engaging in online extramarital affairs with women—it could've been detrimental to them. 

The accounts were banned. I tried to notify the women. Life went on.

All of this to say, this specific reverse image search engine was my tried and true for a reason. 

So, I fired it up and loaded in the images of our kiddy scammer. Immediately, results. Or so it seemed. I clicked on the closest match and hit a wall when a pop-up emerged—"To unlock results please purchase credits"

“Oh,” I thought, “guess it was time to monetize.” Not abnormal with good tools, and not a big deal. I have a company card for a reason, right?

No dice. 

The only way to purchase credits was through Bitcoin. 

Again, not a big deal. I'm an adult, I can buy fucking Bitcoin. 

I did some Googling, found a platform I trusted, and went through the motions to register. First roadblock was uploading my ID—not that I don't have it, but that I'm wary of submitting it to some random crypto company. I did some more Googling, and discovered that uploading my ID was the only way, and the platform was trustworthy—among the top used in Canada. So I did it. 

Then we got to the credit card. Business cards, not accepted. Credit card actually not accepted at all—only debit, or PayPal. Oh, so this is up to me and my personal funds now? Seems unfair, but I'm a woman on a mission. 

I went through the motions, which included submitting a video of myself looking in certain directions and saying number sequences they prompted me with. Finally, I got through to the other side, verification was done, and I attempted to make a purchase. Resigned to spending my own cash, I input the dollar amount and waited. It sent me through to my banking app, and again, nothing happened. 

What the fuck? I waited. Maybe these things take time. I don't know how quickly Bitcoin moves and shakes through the ether—none of my business, frankly.

Eventually, a day passed, and I got a notification that the pending transaction had lapsed and failed. I got in touch with my bank and was told, in different and more words, that the transaction failed because the bank didn't cooperate with that platform. In essence, when it comes to Bitcoin and Canadian banks, triflers need not apply. 

So, I tried another one. The process was much the same. This one, though, felt better. I got the sense that it was going to work. A day passed, and then another day, and eventually, the transaction failed. 

I took it to the team—"Hi, yes, hello, CEO here. How the hell do you purchase this made-up ass money?" 

I was in luck. Not that they knew how, exactly, but that one of them already had Bitcoin. He was willing to front me the funds to find the guy. We'd worry about me and Bitcoin, and our problematic one-sided relationship, when the investigation was through. 

My partner logged in, loaded up the credits, and left me, again, to my own devices. 

The irony, of course, had to be that those original results I had seen? The ones sitting behind the paywall? They weren't authentic. I'm not willing to say the platform faked me out. All I know is that there seemed to be an exact match for the photo I had, and as soon as the credits were purchased, that match was gone. 

I was now without Bitcoin, without a fully effective reverse image search platform, without any more information about our target. And certainly without the confidence of a woman who was “made for this.”

I did what any good leader does and went straight to my empathetic partner for validation and a pat on the back. 

"Kennedy?" Justin said, "I've tried to buy BTC about 20 times and succeeded once." 

Huh? I was floored.

Not because it's earth shattering information, but because I'd assumed that this was an accessible, easy-to-accomplish task with little friction. If my trusty hacker, who I've watched dismantle and reverse-engineer entire data platforms, wasn't nailing it every time, makes sense that I couldn't either. 

He immediately followed that thought up with, "Don't tell anyone, though." 

So I'm here to tell you. Because usually the things that make us pause and think, "No one should know this," are the things other people should or need to hear. 

My name is Kennedy Chappell, and I could not successfully purchase Bitcoin over the course of 6 days, and I refuse to be ashamed. 

On that same call with Justin, I walked him through what I had done to try to identify the scammer. As a non-investigator, I have a habit of assuming that the investigations I do conduct are lacking. I assume that I’ve missed some not-so-secret step that everyone else is employing to source good information.

“Where else can I go from here?” I asked.

He took what seemed to be a long drag from a metaphorical pipe. “Nowhere. Some people are good at not being found.”

Simple as that? Simple as that.

We’ll keep trying, though.

As we speak, I am sitting in the verification stage of my third attempt to purchase Bitcoin. This time, it's been cleared with my bank, and this platform should work. If it doesn't, we'll know for certain that I'm the problem, and I'm sure it'll go to vote whether or not we should demote me with swiftness.