After getting more than 7 TB of data (I don't know what's in it truly)
Given how many selfies they include of him in the press release report at https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1574581/download, I'd wager a terabyte or two are just his own personal photos
7 TB of data is a lot for a business like ChipMixer to have. I suspect that some of this is a copy of the blockchain, which was potentially replicated across multiple full nodes. It is also possible that, for whatever reason, this guy was keeping some information about his customers.
He was caught by using Paypal, unbelievable. Chipmixer is done!
I am not surprised by this. As with the case with SilkRoad, CM was not a success on the day it started, and as such, I presume the operator didn't think he would be as big of a target as he eventually became. It is unusual for law enforcement to devote substantial resources into investigating crimes done on a small scale, and he presumably didn't anticipate how successful CM would eventually become. It seems that he became more careful over time, for example, by requiring customers to only access the mixing portion of his site via tor.