Australian Police Crack Coded Wallet, Seizing $5.9M in Crypto

Australian Federal Police say they have unlocked a password-protected cryptocurrency wallet holding 9 million Australian dollars (about $5.9 million), capping an investigation into an alleged organized-crime figure. AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett praised the “miraculous work” of a data scientist in the agency’s digital forensics unit, who colleagues now call a “crypto safe cracker.”

Investigators first found encrypted notes on the suspect’s phone, along with an image filled with random numbers and words. The strings were split into six groups with dozens of potential combinations, initially offering little clarity. Because the suspect allegedly refused to surrender his wallet keys—a refusal that can carry up to 10 years in prison under Australian law—police feared the funds could remain intact and accessible after any eventual sentence.

The breakthrough came when an AFP data scientist judged that some number sequences “felt wrong,” suggesting human tampering rather than computer generation. His hypothesis was that the suspect added digits to the front of certain strings to disguise a 24-word recovery phrase. By removing the first number in each sequence, the team reconstructed the seed, opening the wallet and securing the funds.

The case is not an isolated success for the AFP’s digital forensics specialists. In a separate matter, the same expert helped recover more than $3 million in digital assets using another decoding approach. Both seizures were made through the AFP-led Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce.

If a court ultimately orders the crypto forfeited, the money will be deposited into a commonwealth account. Under Australian rules, the Home Affairs Minister can then redistribute those proceeds to support crime-prevention initiatives. For law enforcement, the result underscores a growing capability to penetrate sophisticated obfuscation tactics and recover criminal proceeds hidden behind encrypted wallets—sending a clear warning to offenders who believe digital assets are beyond reach.