A petition calling on the White House to release Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the dark web marketplace Silk Road, has gathered more than 275,000 signatures. FreeRoss.org — an initiative created by a group of Ulbricht’s family, friends and supporters — has said that the momentum continues to grow and that they feel that a solution “could come soon.” Through an update on the online petitions website released on March 19, FreeRoss.org claimed Ross is “doing fine”. They have also reported that visits were canceled for 30 days, as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 pandemic. The online petition hopes …
Investigations into the South African company Mirror Trading International (MTI) — widely seen as last year’s most ruinous Bitcoin (BTC) Ponzi scheme — are now engaging the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. MTI, which went into provisional liquidation in December 2020, claimed to have over 260,000 members across 170 countries at its height. It had first caught regulators’ attention in Texas back in July of last year, where its operations were quickly shut down. South Africa’s Financial Services Conduct Authority (FSCA) issued its own statement in August 2020, warning that the company lacked a mandatory license and was offering …
A young Russian citizen and his co-conspirators came within an inch of carrying out a major ransomware attack against Tesla — unaware that their target had already turned them in. Last week, the United States Federal Bureau Investigation (FBI) unsealed a criminal complaint against a conspirator in a thwarted ransomware plot against the electric car maker Tesla. On Aug. 22, the Bureau arrested 27 year-old Russian citizen Pavel Kriuchkov in Los Angeles, who had allegedly spent much of his month in the U.S. attempting to recruit a Tesla staffer at the firm’s Gigafactory Nevada site to collude on a nefarious …
After a lengthy joint investigation with the American FBI, German police have seized over 25 millions euros worth of cryptocurrency associated with the illegal movie streaming site movie2k.to. Shuttered in spring 2013 due to copyright infringement concerns, the site’s two main operators are accused of having distributed over 880,000 pirated copies of films, together with their accomplices, via the site between fall 2018 and spring 2013. They have been charged with operating an illegal streaming service, which enabled users to watch pirated films without downloading them. One of the two, who worked as the site’s programmer, has been in police …
A judge in the Seoul Central District Court dismissed two claims filed by individuals against the controversial crypto exchange, Bithumb. The individuals were seeking $126,000 and $38,000 respectively for damages related to a data breach incident back in 2017. According to Fn News, plaintiffs Hong and Seo (both named only by their surname) stated that they had lost money due to a phishing attack using private data that was extracted in a hack of Bithumb. The third claimant, Jang, was granted $5,000 to cover his total loss. This amount reflects a much lower dollar value than his initial $27,200 claim. …