JAMESON LOPP grew to prominence in the cryptosphere after he successfully vanished in 2017 following attempted blackmail.
But who is Jameson Lopp and how did he disappear?
Who is Jameson Lopp?
Jameson Lopp is a crypto privacy expert and Bitcoin enthusiast.
Born on August 15, 1990, he grew up in North Carolina and graduated as a computer science specialist from the state’s Chapel Hill university in 2007.
He started his career in email marketing before moving into Bitcoin in 2015 when he went to work at the digital asset security company BitGo. He quit the job in 2018 to set up his own firm, Casa, which helps Bitcoin users take better control of their crypto wallets.
However, Lopp’s life took an unusual twist in October 2017 when a SWAT team descended on his neighbourhood.
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Explaining what happened, the tech specialist said in a recent interview: “I had an incident where someone who was sophisticated enough to cover his tracks basically used some throwaway services to place a phone call to my local police department and then claim he was me, give them my home address and claim that I had killed people and was someone else hostage and had explosives in the house.
“Basically touched all of the red flags that you know is going to result in the highest level of threat and therefore police response.”
The entire neighbourhood was put on lockdown while the police frantically prepared to deal with the situation at hand.
Thankfully Lopp was out of the house when the anonymous call was made and was still not home when the police arrived at the scene.
“It’s a form of extortion,” Lopp said, claiming he had been targeted because of his social media presence.
“I sent out a tweet that was basically jeering at the attacker saying ‘you’re going to have to do better than that’.
“And within an hour or two after I sent the jeering tweet, I got a direct call to my phone,” he explained.
“In the call to my voicemail he demanded $50,000 of bitcoin or otherwise he was going to do something worse.
“And of course, nothing ever happened after that because whoever did it is probably living in his mum’s basement and making money doing various cyber crimes.”
The encounter was enough to convince Lopp that “the only option was to burn it all down and start it all over.”
Spending over $30,000 over the year that followed, he set out to vanish from all records.
How did Jameson Lopp disappear?
Lopp carefully followed a number of steps to make sure he disappeared and could never be found again. He even hired a private investigator to try and find him to determine if he had been successful in covering his tracks.
His first step to vanishing was to set up a new limited liability company in a US state that did not require a registered owner. This allowed him to open a corporate credit card for everyday purchases that were not directly linked to his name.
To be on the safe side, whenever possible Lopp also pays in cash to avoid any risk of being tracked.
The privacy expert moved house, changed his phone number, and now introduces himself under a fake name to help make a clean cut with his past.
For good measure, he even bought a decoy house to register as the address for his car to ensure his true whereabouts remain unknown.
“It’s the crappiest, cheapest hole in the wall I could find that has a physical mailbox,” he told the New York Times.
Lopp also has all mail and deliveries sent to a private mailbox at a shipping centre to avoid giving out his real address.
“It takes a lot of dedication, a lot of resources,” he said when explaining the steps he had taken.
Where does Jameson Lopp live now?
Jameson Lopp’s attempts to disappear have so far been a success. His home address has not been publicly exposed.
Lopp says that now, “the number of people who know the actual address of my location at any given time is probably like five”.
Even the majority of his friends and family are unaware of where he lives now.
What is Jameson Lopp’s net worth?
Perhaps unsurprisingly given his love of privacy, little is known about Jameson Lopp’s net worth.
Some estimates online suggest he is worth £2million, but it is unclear how they have calculated the figure.
