Tag Archives: Crime

LI.FI, a protocol offering bridging and swapping services between the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and Solana, was attacked by cybercriminal(s), allowing them to walk away with more than $10 million. The attack targeted smart contracts, taking advantage of bugs to steal the funds stored by them and within wallets interacting with them. Cyvers Alerts notified the crypto community about the occurrence, “More than $8M have been drained so far from users and mostly stablecoins! Attacker is...

In a surprising turn of events, a scammer who stole $24.2 million from a victim has returned $9.3 million to them. The funds were sent via two transactions using the DAI stablecoin—the first transaction occurred on July 8 and was worth $5.23 million, and the second $4.04 million on July 13. They stole these funds on September 6, 2023, by orchestrating a phishing scam, siphoning away 9,579 Lido Staked Ether (stETH) and 4,850 Rocket Pool (rETH) tokens. Those tokens are worth about $47 million...

Alexey Pertsev, a Tornado Cash co-creator, was denied bail for the third time. He will spend the rest of the year behind bars as his legal team prepares an appeal against the money laundering charges. He was also denied access to a computer to prepare for his appeal. The court said that offering him that privilege would bypass its security protocols. Moreover, it has previously claimed that approving Pertsev’s request for supervised release would not make sense as he poses a flight risk. A...

Popular DeFi platform Compound Finance has been breached by scammers, with its website redirecting users to a phishing link. Compound’s dApp and smart contracts remain unaffected. Hackers are redirecting Compound’s users from its site to a lookalike that gathers sensitive information, potentially providing them access to user funds. ZachXBT warned the platform’s users through a Telegram post, “Compound Finance website seems to be hijacked potentially do not visit the site for the time being....

Huione Guarantee, a Cambodian online marketplace worth billions, owned by the Huione conglomerate linked to Cambodia’s ruling family, advances criminal activity and its financing via crypto. Tether’s USDT is a massive payment vessel in the marketplace. Elliptic exposed these happenings in a report. The marketplace connects buyers and sellers by acting as an aggregator of numerous channels from various messaging applications, bringing large groups of buyers and sellers together. These groups...

The much-awaited Mt. Gox repayment process has begun, with the defunct exchange’s bankruptcy estate moving 47,282 bitcoins, with 140,000 pledged to satisfy creditors. That transaction signals the start of this process, and Mt. Gox’s creditors can witness the assets reaching their wallets in the following days at best. Some may receive it 60-90 days from now, although that timeline is believed to be the worst-case scenario. This repayment process was confirmed last month by Mt. Gox through a...

The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) transferred 3,000 bitcoins worth $172 million on Thursday. On-chain analysis reveals that 1,300 bitcoins were sent to centralized exchanges (CEXs) Kraken, Bitstamp, and Coinbase, and the remaining to an unknown Bitcoin wallet. That translates to about $75 million moved to CEXs and $ 97 million to the unknown address. PeckShieldAlert notified its followers about the BKA’s CEX-related transfers on X, “#PeckShieldAlertThe #Bitcoin address bc1qq0…738z...

Ruja Ignota, a Bulgarian national better known as CryptoQueen and founder of the $4 billion OneCoin scam, is still on the run. While there are doubts about whether she is still alive or not, the FBI has raised the stakes to $5 million for anyone providing information about her location that can lead to her arrest. A US District Court charged her in absentia on 12 October 2017 for masterminding the OneCoin Ponzi scheme. “On October 12, 2017, Ignatova was charged in the United States District...

St Felix was convicted on 25 June for his involvement in violent crimes aimed at physically distressing US citizens and parting them away from their crypto. Investigators proved he was the leader of a gang that was involved in such an operation in various regions of the US and abroad between September 2022 and July 2023. 13 other co-conspirators in the US were also convicted for their involvement in the crimes. “Remy St Felix, 24, of West Palm Beach, was a leader of a robbery crew that...

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has charged two men for operating the darknet marketplace Empire Market between 2018 and 2020. The indictment names Thomas Pavey, 38, and Raheim Hamilton, 28, as two men behind the marketplace. Empire Market connected vendors and customers, facilitating the exchange of illegal products and services worth $430 million. Payments on the marketplace occurred through cryptocurrencies. A press release issued by the DoJ read, “THOMAS PAVEY, also known as...