Thieves are draining nearly $5 million in Bitcoin (BTC) from a crypto scammer who profited from deceiving victims through a task scam.
Chainalysis says one of the biggest victims in the Ledger thefts was the scammer themselves.
“One of the biggest victims of the Ledger theft was a scammer themselves. They lost more than 60BTC, about $4.8M. The funds were from a task scam.”
The firm details how the scam operated by paying people to fake sales and reviews of real items before creating a negative balance that tricked victims into adding their own money.
“In this task scam, people were paid to fake sales and reviews of real items. Then a ‘negative balance’ appeared, and they were told to add their own money in order to get paid.”
On September 22nd, the scammer moved the proceeds into three separate Ledger addresses that thieves emptied on October 9th with one transfer each into the same wallet reported as containing stolen funds.
Criminals stole approximately $90 million in digital assets from cryptocurrency wallets last week by tampering with hardware wallets, small USB-like devices designed to securely store the keys used to access crypto holdings, reports the Financial Times.
Ledger said Thursday that organized criminals spent several months buying genuine Ledger devices, opening them and installing concealed components designed to capture users’ recovery phrases during setup. The tampered devices were then returned to circulation through resellers in Southeast Asia.
The attackers also built their own technical and logistical infrastructure, including servers to collect recovery phrases and systems to drain and launder stolen funds.
“They were patient, they spent millions and they struck in one coordinated operation, draining wallets.”
All affected devices were sold by CryptoBilis, a Malaysia-based reseller.
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