Gala Games, the Web3 gaming startup behind mobile RPG Champions Arena and other ventures, was founded in 2019 and has grown steadily. Since then, a falling out has occurred between co-founders Wright Thurston and Eric Schiermeyer. Each controlled 50% of the company, and they are now fighting to remove the other from the board of...Read More
According to cybersecurity researcher ZachXBT, the feature meant to prevent scammers from impersonating legitimate organizations merely created a new black market. Previously, all verified accounts had blue checkmarks. Now, blue checkmarks indicate that the owner of the account has an X Premium subscription and meets the requirements to display the checkmarks. Government officials, multilateral organizations,...Read More
The security services platform that offers protection against Web3 bugs – Immunefi – estimated that hackers and fraudsters have drained approximately $23.4 million worth of digital assets from crypto projects in August. While the figure might sound significant, it is 92% less than the recorded losses in July when wrongdoers siphoned over $320 million. Last...Read More
Google appears to be taking money from fraudsters and facilitating crypto scams. These are the findings from DeFiLlama researcher “0xngmi,” who reported that scammers are buying ads for proper crypto websites on Google, but… When users click on them, “they get sent to an ad network to track the click, but that network redirects to...Read More
Thailand’s Minister of Digital Economy and Society (DES) said he might propose to the court to close Meta (previously known as Facebook) to aid the investing of financial scams, including such involving cryptocurrencies. According to him, some fraudsters use the social media platform to sponsor their fraudulent schemes and thus con victims. No More Meta...Read More
Hacker groups affiliated with North Korea have become highly active in the digital asset space, relentlessly pilfering funds. Despite a decrease from the record-breaking numbers of 2022, the “hermit kingdom” has continued to concentrate on the cryptocurrency landscape this year. In fact, the stolen funds are being funneled in billions into the country’s nuclear program....Read More
Coinbase recently introduced “Base” to foster a community of developers dedicated to constructing decentralized features for its users. While Base is geared toward enhancing the exchange’s utility and encouraging greater customer engagement, this new blockchain attracted more than 500 fraudulent tokens in a relatively brief period. Scam token creators thrive on “hype, promise, and price...Read More
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission said earlier this week that it had filed a complaint against four individuals and their unincorporated entity for operating a fraudulent project involving precious metals and digital assets. The alleged scam had over 14,000 customers at one point. The complaint was filed in the US District Court for the...Read More
Jinwook Shin, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Bitsonic, has been apprehended by South Korean law enforcement on August 7th. He is currently being investigated for allegedly embezzling investments and deposits from users of the exchange. According to the report by South Korean news agency Chosun Biz, Shin is being accused of fraudulently manipulating cryptocurrency prices and trading...Read More
Cypher Protocol, a Solana-based futures DEX, has been forced to pause its smart contract in the wake of an exploit that resulted in a loss of more than $1 million. The Why Late last night, Cypher’s devs announced that they had suffered a “security incident”, resulting in the need to pause their smart contract until...Read More
A resident of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, whose name was undisclosed, has reportedly parted with $9.2 million after falling prey in a typical cryptocurrency romance fraud. The local police said it has never investigated a crypto-related scam where individuals have lost such a substantial sum. The Multi-Million Scheme As reported by Star Tribune, the man started chatting with...Read More
Blackberry has detected several malware families that are being used to run massive campaigns for stealing crypto from devices. In the August edition of ‘The BlackBerry Global Threat Intelligence Report,’ the former titan of the smartphone industry found that finance, healthcare, and government are the top three industries with the highest distribution of cyberattacks. Malware...Read More
On Aug. 2, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said he wanted to “share this (luckily) unsuccessful, but very clever and close scam incident from yesterday. It saved $20 million, he said before adding, “hope it may also save you one day.” Scammers are becoming more sophisticated, and their latest weapon is the generation of addresses with the...Read More
A phishing scammer recently nabbed $20 million in USDT from an unsuspecting victim using a zero transfer phishing attack, reported blockchain security firm PeckShield on Tuesday. The stolen funds were frozen in short order by Tether – the issuer behind USDT – raising questions about who the victim was given the speed of their response....Read More
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sued the controversial crypto entrepreneur Richard Schueler, popularly known within the crypto community as Richard Heart, along with three of his entities, for allegedly engaging in unregistered securities sales and fraudulent activities. Heart purportedly used investors’ money to create a luxury lifestyle for himself, buying expensive items,...Read More
A Tennessee couple was charged for operating a $6 million digital assets commodity pool scheme by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) this week. The United States derivatives market regulator charged the owners of a Clarksville real estate company, Michael and Amanda Griffis, for allegedly defrauding more than 100 people across the country. The couple...Read More
The Valley Stream, New York resident – Eddy Alexandre – received a nine-year prison sentence for engaging in commodities fraud. He was found guilty of swindling $248 million from over 25,000 investors through his cryptocurrency trading platform called EminiFX. The investigation determined that Alexandre used some of the funds to purchase luxurious items for himself,...Read More
The Department of Justice (DOJ) of the United States plans to reinforce its team responsible for investigating cryptocurrency-related crimes with more prosecutors. The unit will also have a new leader, with Claudia Quiroz replacing Eun Young Choi at the helm. The team has played a major role in many of the DOJ’s crypto cases, such...Read More
Faruk Fetih Özer – founder of the once-leading Turkish cryptocurrency exchange Thodex – will spend seven months and 15 days in jail for failing to submit necessary documents to the Tax Inspection Board. He also faces fraud charges about pocketing more than $2 billion in clients’ funds when the platform collapsed in 2021. While Özer...Read More
Canadian law enforcement agents have reportedly arrested the 39-year-old Akil Heywood over allegations that he kidnapped, threatened, and beat Aiden Pleterski in December 2022. The latter supposedly orchestrated a crypto scam, draining over $40 million from investors. Records show that Heywood invested $740,000 with Pleterski, making him one of the countless victims. The alleged fraudster...Read More
Popular on-chain sleuth ZachXBT has unmasked another crypto scammer responsible for stealing millions of dollars in digital assets using sophisticated phishing attacks. The thief’s targets included the discord services for DeFi projects such as Orbiter Finance and Pika Protocol. Impersonation and Confiscation In a Twitter thread published on Monday, ZachXBT explained that the attacker, Soup...Read More
The American authorities have reportedly arrested Brandon Austin and his father, Eugene “Hugh” Austin, over accusations that they run a massive crypto fraud, embezzling over $10 million from investors. Brandon, who has already pleaded guilty, will hear his sentence on September 6. Conning Investors to Fund a Lavish Lifestyle According to recent coverage, federal agents...Read More
Crypto inflows to known criminal addresses are down 65% in 2023 compared to the same period one year ago, according to a mid-year crime update from Chainalysis. However, one form of blockchain-based crime remains stubbornly persistent and is on the rise: Ransomware. Crypto Scammers On The Decline In a blog post from Chainalysis on Wednesday,...Read More
Blockchain detective ZachXBT has implicated a YouTuber with over 120,000 subscribers in over $1.5 million worth of crypto scams over the past two years. Some of those scams are connected to the infamous Monkey Drainer, an anonymous and boastful phishing scammer known for stealing people’s NFTs. Linking “Blue” to Monkey Drainer Before entering the world...Read More
Simon Hoadley – a 66-year-old retired financial advisor who lives in East Sussex, the UK – has reportedly become a victim of a “horrendous” cryptocurrency scam that drained nearly $100,000 from him. Fortunately, legal experts managed to recover nearly all the lost funds. Scammers Have No Mercy As reported by Mirror, Hoadley was looking to earn some...Read More
Two teenage boys from Hamilton, Ontario, have been busted for allegedly stealing over $4 million worth of bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) from an American man through what authorities described as a “spear phishing attack.” According to local reports, Hamilton police started working with the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the Secret...Read More
The United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has charged William Koo Ichioka for defrauding investors of tens of millions of dollars by claiming to be a digital asset and foreign exchange (forex) trader. According to an official statement, the CFTC filed a complaint against Ichioka in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District...Read More
Lux Vending – doing business as Bitcoin Depot – has reportedly filed a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office of McLennan County, Texas, accusing it of unlawfully seizing $15,000 from a BTC automated teller machine (ATM). The authorities confiscated the amount to compensate an elderly victim who had become a victim of a cryptocurrency scam. Bitcoin...Read More
A joint investigation by the FBI’s Money Laundering Squad and Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigations led to a 75-month prison sentence for 64-year-old Arizona entrepreneur Reginald Fowler. A former co-owner of the professional American football team Minnesota Vikings, Fowler has also been asked by the court to pay a forfeiture of $74.02 million and restitution of...Read More
A new report by blockchain security company Beosin revealed that the total amount of crypto assets lost to exit scams and rug pulls was higher than the amount stolen from decentralized finance (DeFi) projects through exploits and attacks last month. Beosin also discovered that losses from the exploits in May were down 79% compared to...Read More
