Many were caught with thousands of $ currency. I wonder if they held onto their bitcoins or cashed out early. It was the early days of bitcoin, so I don't think the authorities knew how to track the coins of these hackers.
Was it ever disclosed that they also received Bitcoin following their apprehension on their illegal indulgences? If $ were recovered from them on that course what made you think there was not going a be a tool to hunt them with other places they launder their funds? Let me remind you that the case of Ross Ulbricht and the darknet marketplace Silk Road happened in 2013 and was not scot free from the US government.
So don't believe it was beyond figure of the government to get those hackers on track if at all they were associated with Bitcoin because as at that time in 2013, there was already networking surveillance tools aligning with the Blockchain analysts to track hackers. Though it was not sophisticated and advanced as the tracking tools we have today and that is why we still believe the total acquired Bitcoin of Ross Ulbricht was not recovered by the US government.
Also remember the total accumulated US reserve on Bitcoin which were acquired by recovery were not all put to analysis of their source. So never undermined. If those so called Xbox crew actually acquired Bitcoin with the indulgence, they must have been among the US Bitcoin seizures but I doubt if they were associated with Bitcoin otherwise, the news must had been speculated all these while.
