- 12 have been accused of cryptocurrency flight
- The group would be responsible for more than $ 263 million in flight
- The organization used social engineering tactics to steal funds
Today, the Ministry of Justice has revealed that 12 people had been charged in a Rico case which involves the theft of more than 263 million dollars, as well as money laundering, break -in and wire fraud, confirmed the American prosecutor’s office.
A mixture of Americans and foreign nationals is accused of “participating in a cyber-compatible racketeering plot in the United States and abroad which brought them closer to more than $ 263 million”.
The group, which would have encountered on an online dating platform, had various roles in the organization, such as database pirates, silver launders and burglars who targeted portfolios of material virtual currency. Pirates would focus on websites and servers, obtaining databases related to cryptocurrency.
Social engineering attacks
From there, target organizers and identifiers organized and gathered information in databases to determine the most precious targets. ” The group would be called the cold and would use social engineering tactics to convince them that their accounts had been victims of cyber attacks and that they had to recover or secure their accounts – by encouraging them to hand over identification information.
“According to the accusation act, the members of the company bleached the stolen cryptocurrency by moving the funds through various mixers and exchanges using” comb channels “, portfolios and virtual private networks to hide their real identities,” confirmed the Ministry of Justice.
In the first three months of 2025, more than $ 1.5 billion in crypto was lost for theft or scam, with an increase of more than 300% of the money lost in the first quarter. The median loss per incident was $ 9,549,339 and only 0.4% of the stolen funds was returned to the victims, confirms Certik research.
Much of this was thanks to a big incident, with hackers sealing more than a billion dollars in one of the biggest crypto flights of all time, against the cryptocurrency exchange platform by Bybit-measuring itself as the greatest robbery in the history of cryptography.
