Hackers steal $243 million in Bitcoin scam

Blockchain detective ZachXBT has exposed another set of hackers who used a social engineering scam to steal over $240 million in Bitcoin from a wealthy victim.

The investigator said both his efforts and the criminals’ own mistakes have already led to “multiple arrests and millions frozen.”

Scammed for 4000 BTC

In mid-August, fraudsters targeted a single creditor at Genesis: the institutional Bitcoin trading desk that went bankrupt in early 2023.

First, the scammers called the victim posing as Google support using a spoofed phone number and gained access to the victim’s personal accounts. They then called again posing as Gemini support, warning the victim that their accounts had been hacked.

Through this, they asked the victim to reset their two-factor authentication and send their Gemini funds to a compromised wallet. Meanwhile, the scammers tricked the victim into downloading the AnyDesk remote desktop application, which allowed them to view the victim’s screen and view their private key via Bitcoin Core.

The hackers recorded their audio and screens as they celebrated the completion of the hack, which netted them 4,064 BTC worth $257 million at current prices.

“An initial trace showed that $243 million was split multiple ways between each party before the funds were quickly released to more than 15 exchanges immediately trading between Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and Monero,” ZachXBT added.

Identification of the culprits

The investigator linked the distribution of the funds to the wallets of the parties involved in the robbery. One of the top three culprits who went by “Wiz” was identified as Veer Chetal after he mistakenly leaked his full name during a screen share.

Chetal’s friend Light also leaked his real name Aakaash during a screen share. Greavys, whose real name is Malone Lam and was responsible for finding details related to the target in his mail, spent much of his stolen money on luxury cars, nightclubs and giving girls Birkin bags.

Box (Jeandhil Serrano), the man who called the victim as a Geminis exchange representative, also spent much of his money on luxury items. However, ZachXBT said that both Box and Greavys wrongly linked their “dirty funds” connected to centralized exchanges to their supposedly private funds on multiple occasions.

Yesterday evening, both Box and Greavys were arrested in Miami and LA. More than millions of their stolen funds have been confiscated with the help of Binance and $500,000 has been returned to the victim.

An indictment in the case against both people was revealed later Thursday.

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