I give you an example: someone recognized Zhou exchanging some 40k$ LR to RMB for some bad rate in a hurry a day after the theft. Zhou said it was unrelated, but this shows that a community can recognize way more than some astonished local Japanese police officer.
Since my name has been mentioned I would just reply in this thread anyway. I'll explain this, for once and for all.
As I explained in the QQ Group where the trades happened, I was cashing out for a Singaporean friend who has $100K in total in several LR accounts. I was able to get much better USD/SGD exchange rates than any bank customers. (I was able to get "interbank" rates:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=76156.0)
I was not "in a hurry". Even on today I have done a deal with someone. (7 days is not "hurry".)
The rate was not bad. Most e-currency exchanges charge 1.5%-2% plus wire fees (about $50 per transaction including routing fees). USD/CNY exchange rate is highly stable and I can access to discounted exchange rate through my Chinese bank as well. I actually got a better deal.
And it's definitely not $40K (which is the stolen USD amount that Bitcoinica claims). I have also placed a single $40K AurumXchange order during the same period.
I still have an operating business in Singapore (
http://www.sgitcoin.com/) and this service is actually quite popular (top Google result for "buy bitcoin in singapore"). Therefore I regularly deal with foreign exchange, money transfers and e-currencies.
This kind of transactions are very common to me. It happens all the time before the hack. (For example, trading over $20K with UserXXX:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=93109.msg1039996#msg1039996)