One of the largest and most talked about attacks this year was the WannaCry (or EternalBlue) ransomware attack that infected 200,000+ computers and earned the hackers a nice six figure payment.
But like any attack that involves stealing money, that money is cold for a few months until the heat wears down. Now it seems there might be a lead on where that money is going. There's a false belief that Bitcoin is anonymous. It isn't. Transactions can be traced through the blockchain right back to the first address.

How They're Laundering It

Obviously more than one person was behind this attack, so it's likely you won't see a single Bitcoin transaction of about $143,000. Instead, they're splitting up between three addresses and using Shapeshift to convert the funds to Monero. The reason for going with Monero is that IT IS ANONYMOUS. With Monero, the transactions can't be traced through the blockchain. But with Shapeshift, their terms state that transactions through shapeshift cannot be hidden and are transparent. This makes for a difficult trace because once it's on the Monero network, the trace disappears.

A quote from a Forbes article:

"By design, the Monero blockchain doesn't publish transaction amounts and so it is not possible to follow them as we do for bitcoins."
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2017/08/03/wannacry-hackers-use-shapeshift-to-launder-bitcoin/#5449f2613d0d

This is good and bad news for Monero. Their technology is shown working like it should, but it's being used in illegal ways. It'll be interesting to find out if the trace can be complete.