The creators of BitClub Network website were charged with helping to run a $722 million cryptocurrency fraud that amounted to a “high-tech Ponzi scheme,” U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito in New Jersey said in a statement.
The BitClub Network claimed that users can earn daily profits from a so called shared mining pools. The website owners have created a referral program so they can trick more users to join their Ponzi scheme.
What they allegedly did amounts to little more than a modern, high-tech Ponzi scheme that defrauded victims of hundreds of millions of dollars. Working with our law enforcement partners here and across the country, we will ensure that these scammers are held to account for their crimes.
U.S. Attorney Carpenito said
A screenshot from Bitclub’s website
From its inception in 2014, BitClub Network was never about sharing crypto mining profits. The alleged scammers created false figures meant to demonstrate BitClub’s earnings from its bitcoin mining pool to its investors between April 2014 and December 2019.
The wire fraud conspiracy charge carries a maximum potential penalty of 20 years in prison, and a fine of up to $250,000. The conspiracy to sell unregistered securities charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine up to $250,000.
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Indian authorities seized bitcoin worth around 90 million Indian rupees ($1.2 million) following the arrest of a 25-year-old Indian computer hacker in Bengaluru, India. Bengaluru Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Sandeep Patil informed media about the development on Friday.
Srikrishna alias Shreeki, the hacker, was arrested on Nov. 18 for the alleged hacking of government portals, three bitcoin exchanges and 10 poker sites, using malware in four of the attacks.
During the investigation, it was found that the Srikrishna had hacked three Bitcoin exchanges and 10 poker sites. The Bengaluru police commissioner said that Bitcoins worth Rs 9 crore have been seized in the matter.
Srikrishna confessed to hacking the e-procurement website of the Karnataka government as far back as 2019, said the report citing the ANI news agency.
An anonymous Bitcoin user is claiming to have lost $16,000,000 (1400 Bitcoins) due to installing an old Electrum wallet version that is running malicious servers.
The user created an issue and explained what happened on the official Electrum’s github page.
It seems the victim was using an infected version of Electrum wallet that asked him to install some sort of malicious updates that triggered the transfer of hist entire Bitcoin balance to a scammers address.
According to bitcoin blockchain the transfer of the stolen funds happened yesterday.
Electrum is a light client, which means it must connect to the blockchain through a server, which by default is chosen from a list of public Electrum servers. Anyone can operate such a public server and some users will be randomly connected to it.
When broadcasting a transaction on Electrum, it gets sent to the Electrum Server you are connected to for propagation to the network. The server should try to add the transaction to its mempool and further propagate it to other Bitcoin nodes.
it seems the attackers have set up a public Electrum Server targeting the old wallets’ users, which was tweaked so that instead of propagating the user’s transaction as it should, it always returns a malicious error message directing the Electrum clients to a phishing website to “upgrade” their Electrum version.
The only way to keep your Bitcoin and other digital currencies safe is to either use an offline wallet or a trusted hardware wallet.
Federal agents arrested John Michael Musbach,31-year-old computer tech, of Haddonfield, New Jersey, and and charged with murder-for-hire for hiring a hitman to kill the child victim of his abuse, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito alleged in a statement.
Musbach, who pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child by sexual contact in 2017, allegedly used unnamed darkweb black-market website and paid 40 Bitcoin to hire a hitman to assassinate a 14-year-old victim. Investigators did not name the website at the center of Musbach’s case. But descriptions of its sales pitch in court filings matched those associated with the now-defunct Besa Mafia site.
Camden County man charged with attempting to hire hitman on Dark Net to kill victim of his child pornography crime https://t.co/FbBgqGSwDZ
Musbach was arrested in March 2016 and charged with child pornography. He ultimately pleaded guilty to the endangering charge and was sentenced Feb. 9, 2018, to a two-year suspended sentence. He was also placed on parole supervision for life.