The fiendish new trick cyber-criminals are using to evade capture

"Follow the money" - for generations it's been the mantra of investigators looking for criminals.

In the cyber-realm, this battle between criminals and the authorities has been raging for years.

Despite the anonymous nature of cryptocurrencies, dozens of cyber-criminals have been caught in the last two years thanks to new techniques able to track their funds around the cryptocurrency blockchain - a public list of all transactions between wallets.

But could the tide be turning?

A new service has launched on the darknet offering criminals a way to check how "clean" their digital coins are.

"We're seeing criminals start to fight back against blockchain analytics and this service is a first," explained Dr Tom Robinson, chief scientist and founder at analysis provider Elliptic, who discovered the website.

"It's called Antianalysis and criminals are now able to check their own Bitcoin wallets and see whether any association with criminal activity could be flagged by authorities," Dr Robinson said.

Elliptic says the discovery shows how sophisticated cyber-crime networks are becoming, and how worried criminals are about getting caught.

"It's a very valuable technique. If your funds are tainted, you can then do more laundering and try to remove that association with criminal activity until you have clean coins," he said.