Microsoft Korea has claimed the country is facing an increase in cryptojacking incidents, according to a report from local English-language daily The Korea Times, published on April 22. The findings were announced by Microsoft security program manager Kim Gwi-ryun during a press conference in Seoul today, which accompanied the release of the annual Microsoft Security Intelligence Report. As previously reported, cryptojacking is the practice of using a computer’s processing power to mine for cryptocurrencies without the owner’s consent or knowledge. According to The Korea Times, South Korea's cryptocurrency mining incident rate in 2018 was 0.05% — reportedly 58% lower than …

The Manhattan district attorney has indicted a group of individuals with allegedly selling drugs and laundering millions of dollars with bitcoin (BTC). The development was announced in a press release published on April 16. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., the United States Secret Service, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), and U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) have indicted Chester Anderson and his criminal accomplices Jarrette Codd and Ronald Maccarty. The defendants allegedly operated stores on the dark web that sold and shipped “hundreds of thousands” of tablets of counterfeit drugs. Authorities seized 420,000 to 620,000 alprazolam tablets, 500 …

A federal jury has convicted two Romanian alleged cybercriminals of spreading malware to steal credit card credentials and illicitly mine cryptocurrency, an announcement from the official website of the United States Department of Justice revealed on April 11. The malware allegedly spread by the suspects was reportedly used for cryptojacking and to steal credit card and other data that the suspects would have sold on darknet markets and used to engage in online auction fraud. As the Justice Department press release reports, Bogdan Nicolescu, 36, and Radu Miclaus, 37, were convicted after a 12-day trial. The two individuals were charged …

Singapore authorities have charged two men for promoting cryptocurrency multi-level marketing (MLM) scheme OneCoin in the first case of its kind for the city state, local daily news outlet Business Times reported on April 10. The two men, who were not named, reportedly engaged in activities involving incorporating a subsidiary to promote OneCoin, as well as signing up new members and taking investments in return for education courses and OneCoin tokens. The case is the latest to afflict OneCoin, which had managed to operate for several years and accrue giant investments before its two Bulgarian founders were indicted by United …

A LocalBitcoins trader who sold Bitcoin (BTC) to more than 1,000 people in the United States will serve two years in federal jail, a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of California confirmed on April 8. Jacob Burrell Campos, a Mexican citizen, amassed more than $820,000 from Bitcoin sales on the P2P platform between 2015 and 2018. Through a combination of cash meetups, ATM transfers and MoneyGram, Burrell served traders on the site without performing anti-money laundering (AML) checks and due diligence on the source of the incoming USD funds, prosecutors said. In custody since …

A 33-year old Danish man has been sentenced to four years and three months in jail for laundering over $450,000 in Bitcoin (BTC), tech news agency The Next Web reports April 8. Citing a press release from Danish Police, the report says that the criminal pleaded guilty to laundering 3 million Danish kroner that came from criminal activity. The crypto launderer reportedly exchanged the dirty money in Bitcoin and sent the funds to his accomplices via accounts of unspecified foreign crypto exchanges. Danish police reportedly detected the intruder through an investigation of card abuse after they found that one of …

South Korean police have arrested suspects behind a cryptocurrency ponzi scheme using artificial intelligence (AI), local English-language news outlet Korea Joongang Daily reported on April 8. The scheme, which reportedly stole a total of 21.2 billion won ($18.3 million) over a six-month period in 2018, came to an end after the Seoul Special Judicial Police Bureau for Public Safety trained robots to catch those involved using keywords and other clues. “Through keywords such as Ponzi, loan and recruiting members, we were able to teach the AI patterns of Ponzi schemes,” Hong Nam-ki, section chief of the bureau’s second investigation team, …

Belgium’s Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) has updated a blacklist of crypto-related websites associated with fraud, according to an official statement on April 4. Following a previous crypto-related scam blacklist update in December 2018, the FSMA has added seven new crypto trading platforms where it has found signs of fraud. The blacklist now includes a total of 120 websites. In the statement, the financial authority noted that it continued to receive new complaints of consumers who invested in cryptocurrencies on those trading platforms, adding that crypto fraud is still taking place in Belgium. Similar to the previous update, the …

Disclaimer: this article has been updated to include comments from Vanbex. Canadian police have frozen assets of the founders of blockchain consulting firm Vanbex, which raised $22 million in an alleged fraudulent initial coin offering (ICO). The development was reported in a court document released on March 14. According to the document, Vanbex founders Kevin Hobbs and Lisa Cheng claimed to the public that they operated a Vancouver-based cryptocurrency firm, starting from 2017. The firm, which was interchangeably called Vanbex and Etherparty, is actually a shell company that developed no useable products, the court document argues. The police have now …

A new strain of Trojan malware for Android phones is targeting global users of top crypto apps such as Coinbase, BitPay and Bitcoin Wallet, as well as banks including JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America. The news was reported by technology news outlet The Next Web on March 28. Based on research from prominent cybercrime analytics firm Group-IB, this is reportedly the first time the Trojan — now named “Gustuff” — has been reported or analyzed. The malware is described as being designed for mass infection and is spread by SMS messages with links to load malicious Android package …

Data scientists at blockchain infrastructure firm Elementus have published details of recent transactions from crypto exchange CoinBene that they consider to be suspect, beginning with $105 million in crypto swiftly being moved out of the exchange’s hot wallet. The findings, reportedly based on data sourced using the Elementus Query Engine, were published on March 27. Elementus also provides independently verifiable raw data that readers can download and compare against the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. As previously reported, CoinBene was yesterday prompted to reassure users that a period of unforeseen maintenance was in fact not due to a hack, as some community …

Video-sharing platform YouTube purportedly ran a malicious advertisement for Bitcoin (BTC) wallet Electrum by mistake, according to a Reddit post published on March 26. Viewers interested in the advertisement were redirected to a malicious link using a common scamming method called typosquatting or URL hijacking. In the Reddit post, a user named mrsxeplatypus warned the public about the promotion of a malware version of Electrum, and described how the scam ad worked: “The malicious advertisement is disguised to look like a real Electrum advertisement [...] It even tells you to go to the correct link (electrum.org) in the video but …