Crypto crime (financing terror, money laundering, fraud, ponzi, etc.)

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US DOJ considers fairer repayment standards for crypto fraud victims​

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) wants to review the repayment process for digital assets investors who lose money to fraud and other criminal activities. An April 7 memo from the DOJ acknowledged that these investors are not getting the full value of their digital assets.
According to the memo by the Deputy Attorney General (DAG), several crypto firms entered bankruptcy in 2022, causing investors losses. The memo noted that losses in some cases were due to fraud and theft, and the DOJ recovered the proceeds of this criminal activity, including digital assets, through forfeitures.

However, it observed that the increase in the value of digital assets over the period was not reflected in the repayment to the victims, because regulations that require the return of forfeited assets to victims should be at their fair value at the time of the fraud. It said:

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/sav...S&cvid=62c718eaadff46fd8d90070d31352691&ei=17
 

Bitcoin RICO: Feds say $265 million crypto theft ring blew $13M on exotic cars, nightclubs​

  • Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., have charged 13 men in what court records describe as a wide-ranging conspiracy to identify victims with substantial holdings of cryptocurrency, steal those assets, and then launder the proceeds.
  • More than $265 million in crypto was stolen from the victims, according to a superseding indictment.
  • One of the defendants, Malone Lam, was previously charged in connection with the largest of those thefts, which netted about $245 million in crypto from a man in D.C.
Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., charged 13 men in what court records describe as a wide-ranging conspiracy to identify victims with substantial holdings of cryptocurrency, steal those assets, and then launder the proceeds.

More than $265 million in crypto was stolen from the victims, according to a superseding indictment obtained Thursday by CNBC.

The participants, Americans and foreign nationals who allegedly became friends on online gaming platforms, are accused of spending lavishly after the thefts, including $9 million on exotic cars and $4 million on nightclubs, as well as on multiple rental properties.

One of the defendants, 20-year-old Singapore native Malone Lam, was previously arrested and charged in connection with the largest of those thefts, which netted about $245 million in bitcoin from a man in D.C. in mid-August.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mar...S&cvid=a3e7555b342f4999972ef85638566b5b&ei=18
 

Iranian Crypto Exchange Hacked for $81.7 Million By Pro-Israel Group

Iranian crypto exchange Nobitex hacked for $81.7M on Tron. ZachXBT uncovers exploit tied to vanity address in latest crypto security breach.
watcher.guru
 

Trump inaugural impersonators scammed donors out of crypto, feds say​

  • Scammers impersonating the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee fraudulently stole hundreds of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency, according to a complaint.
  • The perpetrators used phony email addresses made to look like they belonged to the inaugural committee to ” trick or coerce victims into providing them money,” according to the filing.
  • Of the stolen funds, the U.S. government is seeking to permanently seize nearly 40,400 USDT.
Scammers impersonating the President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance Inaugural Committee fraudulently stole hundreds of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency, according to a new complaint filed by federal prosecutors.

The perpetrators used phony email addresses made to look like they belonged to the inaugural committee to ” trick or coerce victims into providing them money,” according to the civil complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

More:

 

Pig butchering scam - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

WSJ

Millions Stolen, Death Threats: Should Banks Do More to Fight ‘Pig Butchering’?​

For nearly 50 years, Anamarie Hurt trusted her husband, Craig, to manage their finances. And he did a good job of it, making investments that grew into a comfortable nest egg.

Then Craig walked into a bank in Tulsa, Okla., and began moving their retirement funds into cryptocurrency investments that turned out to be fake. A year later, after losing more than $5 million, the Hurts’ life savings were gone.

At first, Anamarie’s anger was directed at Craig. But it soon found another target: the bank that she said helped him send wires as high as $300,000 at a time to scammers.

Now that investment scams, sometimes called pig butchering, are booming global operations, some Americans are demanding their banks and financial advisers do more to prevent the scams from happening. Pressure is also spreading to telecoms and social-media platforms such as Facebook, where scammers find their marks.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mar...t-pig-butchering/ar-AA1IV76s?ocid=socialshare
 

Update

Do Kwon pleads guilty to US fraud charges in $40 billion crypto collapse​


NEW YORK (Reuters) -Do Kwon, the South Korean cryptocurrency entrepreneur behind two digital currencies that lost an estimated $40 billion in 2022, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to two U.S. charges of conspiracy to defraud and wire fraud.

Kwon, 33, who co-founded Singapore-based Terraform Labs and developed the TerraUSD and Luna currencies, entered the plea at a court hearing in New York before U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mar...-crypto-collapse/ar-AA1Kp3DW?ocid=socialshare
 

Investor loses 783 bitcoins in one transaction​

A cryptocurrency investor lost nearly $91 million worth of Bitcoin in a single transaction after falling victim to a sophisticated scam. The incident occurred on Tuesday, August 19, 2025, at 11:06 UTC, according to blockchain investigator ZachXBT.

The victim was tricked by fraudsters posing as customer support for a major crypto exchange and a hardware wallet provider. Believing the impostors were legitimate, the investor shared access credentials, enabling the scammers to drain 783 Bitcoin from the wallet within minutes.

ZachXBT revealed the theft on X Thursday, calling it one of the largest Bitcoin losses caused by a social engineering attack. Notably, the wallet address that first received the stolen funds appeared “clean,” showing no prior links to hacks or illicit activity—suggesting the attacker carefully planned the heist to avoid immediate detection.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mar...-one-transaction/ar-AA1L0pr4?ocid=socialshare
 

Chinese billionaire convicted over world’s largest crypto scam​

A Chinese fugitive has been convicted for attempting to launder £5.5bn from a house in Hampstead after running what is believed to be the world’s biggest cryptocurrency scam.

Zhimin Qian, 47, defrauded more than 128,000 victims in her home country in an investment scam between 2014 and 2017.

The Treasury wants to use her seized funds to help plug the hole in Britain’s public finances, but Chinese investors say the money belongs to them.

Qian was arrested by Scotland Yard in April last year after she fled China under the name of Yadi Zhang and used a fake St Kitts and Nevis passport to enter the UK in July 2017.

Her company, Lantian Gerui, sold investment products and promised returns of up to 300 per cent.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/com...gest-crypto-scam/ar-AA1NxIml?ocid=socialshare
 

Dubai’s Billion-Dollar Crypto Underworld (Correct)​

Oct 6, 2025
(Corrects video originally published March 10 to remove mischaracterization of Dubai-based crypto entrepreneur.)
In early 2024, the US charged Sam Lee with running a Ponzi and pyramid scheme called HyperVerse, alleging he defrauded people of $2 billion. But instead of facing trial in the US, Lee now lives in Dubai, where he’s pitching new crypto products.
Lee denies any wrongdoing. But crypto industry experts alleged victims and online “scam hunters” are raising questions about whether regulators in the United Arab Emirates are doing enough to combat crypto fraud as Dubai seeks to position itself as a hub of finance and technology.
On a scorching July day in Dubai, Sam Lee was inside a climate-controlled wine bar, sipping a glass of chilled red, looking untouchable. Near the beginning of the year, US authorities announced that they’d charged Lee with conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud. They alleged that, as the co-founder of a company called HyperVerse, he’d orchestrated a cryptocurrency scam that bilked investors around the world for almost $2 billion. HyperVerse had promised returns as high as 1% a day via cutting-edge blockchain-based strategies, but according to the US Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, it was just an old-fashioned Ponzi scheme. Lee has denied wrongdoing.

16:57

0:00 The two sides of Sam Lee
2:06 HyperVerse’s collapse
5:58 The Crypto Ponzi Scheme Avenge
9:10 Dubai’s crypto underworld
12:59 Detained in Dubai
 

A dark web drug trafficker was forced to forfeit nearly $25 million in Bitcoin after a Bucks County sale helped unravel his scheme​

Zhengcheng Huang’s scheme was relatively straightforward, federal prosecutors said: Using the moniker “Chinodrug” on the dark web, Huang made illegal shipments of oxycodone to buyers across the United States, and typically asked to be paid in Bitcoin, which made the digital transactions harder to trace.

But after Huang pleaded guilty earlier this year to conspiracy to distribute oxycodone, federal prosecutors in Philadelphia moved to seize his illicit proceeds — and that kicked off a unique legal battle.

The typical fine for a defendant found guilty of the crime to which Huang admitted ranges between $500,000 and $1 million, prosecutors and Huang’s lawyers agreed.

And had Huang been paid in cash for his drugs, his lawyers said, the shipments he would have been responsible for overseeing would have generated about $1.7 million.

But because buyers paid in Bitcoin, and because the currency has been skyrocketing in value in recent years, the nearly 200 Bitcoins found in Huang’s digital accounts are now worth almost $25 million.

Read the rest here:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crim...ravel-his-scheme/ar-AA1OsINC?ocid=socialshare
 

Brothers Charged With Stealing $25M in Crypto In 12 Seconds​

Oct 16, 2025
Feds charged two brothers with stealing $25 million in cryptocurrency, but they say they simply outsmarted some bots and what they did was not illegal.

10:59
 

Melania Trump used as ‘window dressing’ in memecoin scam that caused millions in losses, lawsuit claims​

Two men behind a range of cryptocurrencies promoted by the likes of First Lady Melania Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei have been accused of engaging in fraud and exploiting “celebrity association and ‘borrowed fame’ to sell legitimacy to unsuspecting investors,” according to a new legal filing.

A federal class action lawsuit was first brought against Benjamin Chow and Hayden Davis, co-founders of the crypto exchange Meteora and the venture capital firm Kelsier Labs, respectively, in April this year, reports Wired.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/othe...s-lawsuit-claims/ar-AA1OYBr8?ocid=socialshare
 

Unmasking China’s Cryptoqueen: Behind Britain’s biggest bitcoin seizure - BBC World Service Docs​

Nov 10, 2025 #BBCEye #China #Cryptoqueen
This is the story behind Britain's biggest ever seizure of cryptocurrency.
Between 2014 and 2017, thousands of ordinary Chinese people handed their money over to an investment company that promised them fabulous riches. That vision collapsed when the shadowy figure behind it, Qian Zhimin, fled to the UK with a Bitcoin stash bought with their money.
#BBCEye Investigations speaks to victims and the UK police to find out how the scheme worked, how Qian was caught and what will happen to the huge haul of Bitcoin seized from her.

13:31

00:00 Qian Zhimin: The Chinese cryptoqueen    
00:44 The scam that reached every province in China
03:22 Qian escapes China for the UK
06:32 A dream of becoming queen of Liberland
10:20 What will happen to the bitcoin worth billions of pounds?

Liberland - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org
 


If it was indeed hacked versus merely being compromised, that could cause BTC to implode.
 
None of this paints a good picture for Crypto-currency. It's all Hacking, Theft, Tracking, Forgotten passwords. Although, in that article I think they were calling the hacking in order to compromise the BTC somehow. Not the BTC algo.
 

Crypto millionaire 'fraudster' and his wife kidnapped and murdered in UAE​

A Russian cryptocurrency con artist and his wife were kidnapped and murdered overseas after a reported ransom demand went unmet.

Roman Novak and his wife Anna vanished in early October, sparking concern among family members who hadn't heard from them for several days. The couple was reportedly kidnapped by individuals demanding a ransom, but when the money wasn't delivered, they were killed in the United Arab Emirates, according to local media reports on Nov. 7.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crim...-murdered-in-uae/ar-AA1QuXA4?ocid=socialshare
 

Update

Crypto king Do Kwon jailed for 15 years over $40bn stablecoin fraud​

Disgraced 34-year-old cryptocurrency mogul Do Kwon was sentenced on Thursday to 15 years in prison for a fraud that wiped out $40bn (€34.1bn) in value, devastated charities, and drove some investors to the brink of suicide.

Kwon, a Stanford graduate known by some as “the cryptocurrency king”, apologized after listening as victims — one in court and others by telephone — described the toll his scam had on their lives, including wiping out nest eggs and people's entire retirement funds.

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said at a daylong sentencing hearing in a Manhattan federal court that the government’s recommendation of 12 years in prison was “unreasonably lenient” and that the defense's request for five years was “utterly unthinkable and wildly unreasonable”.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/com...stablecoin-fraud/ar-AA1SdSpF?ocid=socialshare
 

CEO of South Philadelphia bitcoin mining company defrauded investors out of $48.5 million, regulators say​

For years after the abrupt folding of a South Philadelphia-based company that promised big returns on cryptocurrency, investors who lost thousands of dollars had two questions — where was the firm’s elusive CEO, and when would he be held accountable?

A lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission this month is offering answers.

Danh C. Vo, the 37-year-old founder of the now-defunct VBit Technologies Corp., was accused last week of misappropriating more than $48 million of investor funds in a nationwide scheme that affected 6,400 people. Vo’s alleged victims, many of them in the Philadelphia region, gave him money to maintain highly advanced computers they believed would generate passive income through the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/com...n-regulators-say/ar-AA1SUPvW?ocid=socialshare
 

Update

Ilya Lichtenstein, Bitcoin hacker behind massive crypto theft, credits Trump for early prison release​

  • Ilya Lichtenstein, who hacked crypto exchange Bitfinex and stole nearly 120,000 bitcoin, said he has been freed from prison early.
  • Lichtenstein said he was being released thanks to the First Step Act, the bipartisan prison-reform law signed by President Donald Trump.
  • Lichtenstein’s wife, Heather Morgan, who also pleaded guilty as part of the bitcoin laundering scheme, celebrated her husband’s apparent release.
The Russian-U.S. national who hacked crypto exchange Bitfinex and stole nearly 120,000 bitcoin said he has been freed from prison early thanks to the bipartisan prison-reform law signed by President Donald Trump.

Ilya Lichtenstein, 38, had been sentenced in November 2024 to five years in prison after pleading guilty to a money laundering conspiracy charge and admitting to the hack of crypto assets now valued in the billions of dollars.

More:

 
Small-Time Crypto Investors Are Facing Violent Attacks: Rising prices and the irreversible nature of crypto transactions have led to a surge of brutal home invasions and kidnappings. (BusinessWeek free)
 

How blockchain tracing exposed $105M Incognito dark web market​

The creator of Incognito Market, the online black market that used cryptocurrency as its primary payment rail, has been sentenced to 30 years in prison after blockchain transaction analysis cited by US authorities linked him to the platform.

The Justice Department said on Wednesday that a Manhattan court gave Rui-Siang Lin three decades behind bars for owning and operating Incognito, which sold $105 million worth of illicit narcotics between its launch in October 2020 and its closure in March 2024.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mar...-dark-web-market/ar-AA1VI2IY?ocid=socialshare
 

$40 million worth of crypto stolen from Step Finance — hackers compromise executives’ devices to gain illicit access​

Decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Step Finance has detected a breach over the weekend, with the company reporting that the devices used by members of its executive team were compromised and used to execute the hack. Blockchain security company CertiK posted on its incident monitoring account on X (via BleepingComputer) that 261,854 SOL has been illicitly withdrawn, estimated to be worth around $28.9 million. However, the DeFi platform later announced that the total amount lost is closer to $40 million.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/tech...n-illicit-access/ar-AA1VJEjv?ocid=socialshare
 

Mother and daughter captives rescued by passerby in France’s latest crypto-linked kidnapping​

It was the photo of a loved one nobody wants to receive.

When the partner of a 35-year-old magistrate in France checked his phone last week, he saw a picture of his partner accompanied by a stark warning: pay a ransom in cryptocurrency or we will mutilate her.

The man – an associate in a start-up that has cryptocurrency activities – reported the demand to French police on Thursday morning, sparking a multi-agency manhunt involving as many as 160 officers, local authorities said.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...inked-kidnapping/ar-AA1W4fuJ?ocid=socialshare
 

Teen crypto scammer stole $13M to splurge on private jets, Lambo​

A Canadian teen stole more than $13 million in crypto through social engineering scams to pay for an “exotic lifestyle” in Miami and Los Angeles, including buying luxury cars, jewelry and taking private jet trips, US prosecutors say.

In May, US prosecutors charged then-19-year-old Trenton Richard Johnston for a scheme in which he and co-conspirators impersonated Google, Trezor and other crypto firm employees to gain access to victims’ crypto.

On Tuesday, Johnston, now 20, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering, avoiding further charges that could have resulted in a maximum sentence of up to 40 years in prison.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crim...ivate-jets-lambo/ar-AA25mT0h?ocid=socialshare
 

The feds in Philly charged two men with running a cryptocurrency money laundering scheme that tried to conceal nearly $400 million​

Two men living in the Republic of Georgia have been charged by federal authorities in Philadelphia with running an international money laundering scheme that tried to use cryptocurrency exchanges to mask the source of nearly $400 million, prosecutors said Thursday — including at least $20 million that came directly from accounts associated with illicit actors on the dark web.

Igorevich Tkachuk, 37, of Ukraine, and Alexander Vladimirovich Ledenev, 25, of Russia, were arrested Wednesday in Georgia, where both live in the coastal city of Batumi, according to U.S. Attorney David Metcalf. Prosecutors will seek to extradite them to Philadelphia to face money laundering charges.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crim...arly-400-million/ar-AA25p6Xm?ocid=socialshare
 
I'm seeing a lot of reports like this on X today:

Scary stuff.
 

 
JUST IN: A second Coldcard hack has been reported.

A total of 1,158.81 BTC has been stolen from 2,673 addresses so far, according to Galaxy Research.

Users are urged to review the company's official security guidance as soon as possible‼
Click to expand...

 
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