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A cohort of lawless US-based youngsters are making millions of dollars by stealing crypto assets over the phone. In a revealing undercover recording, a telemarketing scammer confessed to his scheme to a famous Bitcoin podcaster.  Junseth, the co-creator of one of the earliest Bitcoin podcasts, has published his half-hour conversation with the thief as a standalone episode. The thief didn’t give Junseth permission to record or publish the conversation, in which he admits to committing multiple federal crimes. During the reverse interview, which started as an unsolicited phone call from someone pretending to be Coinbase customer support, a scammer claiming to be a high school student tries to convince Junseth of a supposedly imminent security threat. He quickly walks Junseth through a series of seemingly innocuous steps to ‘protect’ his Coinbase account. Of course, these steps are cleverly devised to grant the thief access to Junseth’s Coinbase and/or Google accounts...

The US Treasury has announced it is sanctioning crypto mixer Sinbad.io, claiming it’s responsible for laundering millions of dollars stolen by North Korea’s Lazarus group.  According to a Treasury press release, the Sinbad mixer allegedly obfuscated millions of dollars taken from Horizon Bridge, Axie Infinity, and customers of Atomic Wallet. It’s said to have laundered most of the $620 million stolen from Axie Infinity users in March 2022, the majority of the $100 million taken from Horizon Bridge in June 2022, and the bulk of the $100 million stolen from Atomic Wallet users in June this year.  The US also claims Sinbad is used by cybercriminals “to obfuscate transactions” that are linked to “ sanctions evasion, drug trafficking, the purchase of child sexual abuse materials , and additional illicit sales on darknet marketplaces.” Authorities may have shut down the mixer’s original address, however, it appears that a mirror of the seized site was apparently registered in...

The funds seized by Tether were linked to a “pig butchering” scam that cost U.S. citizens $3.3 billion in 2022, according to the FBI.  Stablecoin issuer Tether reported freezing $225 million worth of its cryptocurrency USDT in a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) probe targeting an international human trafficking ring operating in Southeast Asia.  Per the FBI, the “pig butchering” scam involved a romantic scheme set up by scammers who engineered fake crypto exchanges to steal billions from American users. The theft usually started with a “Hi” text and ended with victims trading on platforms operated by this syndicate . Blockchain analytics provider Peckshield pointed to at least six blacklisted wallet addresses. One wallet held as much as $87 million in Tether’s U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin. These funds were held in external self-custodial wallets, meaning they did not belong to Tether customers. #PeckShieldAlert $USDT Added BlackList: 0x82e1d4ddd...

The cybercrime unit of Israeli police completed an investigation against crypto scammers that defrauded users of “tens of millions” of euros. After several months of work, the Israeli police have concluded an investigation targeting an Israeli company that allegedly developed sting software that tricked crypto investors into losing money. The criminals targeted European crypto investors using outbound calls and promised high investment returns. They gave them passwords and usernames to access a fake website with different crypto currency portfolios. Serbian, Ukrainian, Georgian, German, Spanish, and Israeli nationals were among those targeted by scammers. The exact amount of money lured is unknown. However, local media Ynet suggests the amount could be “tens of millions” of euros. The police suspect that the operation was run by some of Israel’s most critical crime families. Local police raided the operations offices and arrested six suspects. ...

A crypto Scam mer has stolen more than $15 million in bitcoin, ether, tether, and SHIB by cloning the user interface of popular Hong Kong-based crypto exchange HitBTC . According to crypto compliance expert SlowMist, the scam, which has been running for nearly a year, tricks users into activating a phishing contract (“unlimited authorization for your $USDT”) before instructing them to deposit assets as normal. Then, once the transaction is confirmed, the Scam mer drains the rest of the user’s wallet. The ruse operates exclusively on the Bitcoin, Tron, and Ethereum networks. SlowMist also discovered that the perpetrator was impersonating more than HitBTC. Indeed, according to the firm’s research, they run similar sites that mirror numerous web3 tools, Dapps, and exchanges such as South Korean Coinone and former FTX subsidiary LedgerX . In addition, it has many similar phishing sites, which seems to be a big #ShaZhuPan. pic.twitter.com/fuHfzkC6tz — MistTra...

To combat crypto crime in the United States, industry participants often turn to securities regulation and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). But when it comes to cracking down on bad actors, the Department of Justice’s emerging playbook seems to have a far greater success rate. Wire fraud , hailed as the “most powerful law in crypto ” by Reuters, proves effective as charges aren’t contingent on the securities classification of crypto assets. The SEC can handle civil charges and dish out fines, but it doesn’t have the power to bring criminal charges against individuals — but the state attorney generals and the DoJ can. The DoJ has already used wire fraud to land dozens of crypto’s bad actors in prison. Wire fraud is the most common criminal charge against crypto promoters. Here, ‘wire’ relates to interstate wire communications, not bank wires. Wire fraudsters use telecommunications or the internet to defraud victims ...