- 12 have been accused of cryptocurrency theft
- According to reports, the group is responsible for more than $ 263 million in robbery
- The organization used social engineering tactics to steal funds
The Department of Justice has revealed that 12 people have been accused in a rich case that implies the theft of more than $ 263 million, as well as money laundering, home robberies and Wire fraud, confirmed the office of the United States prosecutor.
A mixture of foreign Americans and citizens are accused of “participating in a cyber extortion conspiracy throughout the United States and abroad that scored more than $ 263 million.”
According to the reports, the group, which met on an online dating platform, had several roles in the organization, such as database computer pirates, money washing machines and thieves that went to virtual hardware wallets. Computer pirates would focus on websites and servers, obtaining databases related to cryptocurrencies.
Social Engineering attacks
From there, the organizers and the information of the objective identifiers organized and collected in the databases to determine the most valuable objectives. “The group would call the cold victims and use social engineering tactics to convince them that their accounts had been victims of cyber attacks, and that they needed to recover or secure their accounts, encouraging them to deliver credentials.
“According to the accusation, the members of the company washed the income of the cryptocurrency stolen by moving the funds through several mixers and exchanges using” pelar chains “, transfer wallets and virtual private networks to mask its true identities,” confirmed the Department of Justice.
In just the first three months of 2025, more than $ 1.5 billion of robbery cryptography or scams were lost, with an increase of more than 300% in the money lost in the first quarter. The median loss per incident was $ 9,549,339, and only 0.4% of the stolen funds were returned to the victims, confirms Certik’s investigation.
A large part of this was thanks to a great incident, with the computer pirates that sealed more than $ 1 billion in one of the largest cryptography robberies in history, against the cryptocurrency exchange platform bybit, which measures as the attraction in the history of cryptocurrencies.
