Read this fascinating
story of a young bitcoin fellow named Jimmy who stole from silk road. The site happened to have a glitch and Jimmy withdrew 50,000 btc. The owner of silk road contacted him when it appeared to him, that 50k btc disappeared from his wallet due to the glitch, but Jimmy afforded him no help. Later, Jimmy transferred $800 to a KYC enabled exchange, and the cops were able to link it back to the stolen 50,000btc from silk road. How possible is this?
Bitcoin has a public ledger and transactions on Bitcoin blockchain can be traced with Bitcoin block explorers.
List of useful Bitcoin block explorers.
Jimmy did not touch those bitcoin for a long time but after all, he felt safely to touch them after some years and made mistakes. He did not know that government watched those addresses very closely to catch him.
More information about this case from DOJ's press release.
U.S. Attorney Announces Historic $3.36 Billion Cryptocurrency Seizure And Conviction In Connection With Silk Road Dark Web Fraud