DeFi News Official Today TheBitTimes.com

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Matt Gaetz to be the next attorney general of the United States. Gaetz is a former representative from Florida who was under investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and House Ethics Committee for sexually trafficking minors and who took part in efforts to prevent votes from counting in 2020. This nomination draws greater attention to the relationship between Gaetz and the crypto industry, a frequent target of the DOJ.  Joel Greenberg Joel Greenberg, the former Seminole County Tax Collector, was one of the individuals who was cooperating with the DOJ in its investigation of Gaetz.  Greenberg, who is a long-time associate of Gaetz, admitted that he had paid a 17-year-old girl for sex. The New York Times reported that he told prosecutors that Gaetz also had sex with the girl.  Greenberg has repeatedly found ways to integrate bitcoin and crypto into his criminal and unethical behavior. These activities include suppos...

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. ...