Humans notoriously overestimate their competence and underestimate dangers they face. Combine that with a federal investigation that's going to be slow because 1) it's complex and 2) the feds will happily investigate you for years if it increases their chance of a conviction, and you've got a recipe for people who think they got away with it right up until the moment of arrest.
Yea, listening to enough stories on Darknet Diaries about how people get caught it’s pretty crazy. Honestly makes working in the groups that catch people like this sound very interesting.
I think it's more underestimating the attention span of governments/law enforcement.
When someone steals your bike, the cops could spend weeks investigating, interviewing witnesses, searching Craiglist, Facebook Marketplace, staking out the neighborhood for anyone riding the stolen bike, etc.
But they don't, because it's a bike. But steal $3.6 billion, you'll hold their attention for a bit!
