Crimew is known for leaking source code and other data from companies such as Intel and Nissan, and for discovering a 2019 copy of the United States government's No Fly List on an unsecured cloud server owned by CommuteAir.

[4][5] In March 2021, crimew was indicted by a grand jury in the United States on criminal charges related to her alleged hacking activity between 2019 and 2021.

People used the hashtag "#freetillie" to express support for her following the raid, and the Swiss magazine Republik compared her to Jeremy Hammond and Aaron Swartz.

[11][15] In March 2021, Distributed Denial of Secrets created a torrent of data from the channel after crimew's home was raided and her devices were seized.

[21] On March 8, 2021, a group of hackers including crimew and calling themselves "APT - 69420 Arson Cats"[22][23] gained "super admin" rights in the network of Verkada, a cloud-based security camera company,[24] using credentials they found on the public internet.

[26][28] Crimew acted as the spokesperson for the group of hackers;[29] during the hack, she tweeted "What if we just absolutely ended surveillance capitalism in two days?

The indictment, and a raid by the Swiss police in which crimew's electronic devices were seized at the request of United States authorities, came shortly after she claimed involvement in the Verkada hack, but did not contain charges related to it.

[10][43] Hacking researcher Gabriella Coleman said that she expected crimew to gain more support in "the hacker community" as a result of the indictment, stating that, in some cases, the United States government has been overly aggressive in prosecuting "hacktivists", who "[pursue] a variety of leftist and anti-authoritarian ideals", and that "the hacker community has this in mind".

[44] Seattle prosecutors rebuked the view that the leak had "any redeeming quality", with U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman stating that "publishing source code and proprietary and sensitive information on the web is not protected speech — it is theft and fraud", and that "wrapping oneself in an allegedly altruistic motive does not remove the criminal stench from such intrusion, theft, and fraud".

[44] Hernâni Marques said that "much of what [she] did would not be punishable in Switzerland", additionally stating that much of the data crimew leaked was publicly available on the internet and arguing that the hack of Verkada was "legitimate and useful for society" because of the privacy issue it exposed.

[6] In March 2021, Blick reported that a potential warrant for crimew's arrest issued by the United States would likely be executed by all countries that share a border with Switzerland.

[47] In October 2021, Zeit Magazin reported that, while Interpol does not publicize most of its investigations, it was likely that an international arrest warrant had been issued for crimew, which would potentially render her unable to leave Switzerland.

[54][55] Crimew worked with journalist Ryan Fae to investigate the true identity behind what was thought to be one of Elon Musk's alternative accounts on Twitter, determining that Adrian Dittmann was his real name and that he lived in Fiji.

[10][43] Crimew has cited curiosity,[10] anti-capitalism, anarchism, and opposition to the concept of intellectual property as motives for her hacking,[61][62] stating that "caring about literally nothing but profit definitely doesn't result in security".