Typos Lead to $27 Million Crypto Heist

Another band of baddies was busted this week, but not before they emptied the wallets of around 4,000 investors in at least 12 different countries.

Law enforcement agencies in Europe reported that a group of five men and one woman aged 19 to 37 were responsible for typosquating, meaning they created a website that was close to the name Blockchain.com and “spoofed” the look of the site so that unsuspecting visitors would think they were at the right place.

Of course this meant that the perpetrators could capture the login credentials of users and then utilize that info to steal the digital assets in their wallets on the platform.

However, this Dirty Half-Dozen took things a couple of steps further and according to the press release from the South West Regional Cyber Crime Unit (SW RCCU), the group actually promoted the nefarious website via Google Adwords.

This was a 14-month joint investigation involving the Dutch national police and the U.K.’s South West Regional Cyber Crime Unit. Additionally, the operation was backed by Europol, the EU’s law enforcement intelligence agency, and its Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce as well as the U.K.’s National Crime Agency and the EU agency that handles judicial cooperation relating to criminal matters, Eurojust.

Three of the male suspects were arrested in the southwest English counties of Somerset and Wiltshire on charges of suspicion of money laundering and computer misuse. The two remaining men of the group were arrested in Amsterdam and Rotterdam on charges suspicion of committing money laundering, but at this time I’m unable to find where the female suspect was arrested.

Authorities stated that there may be additional victims and the net amount may go up considerably higher once they’ve had a chance to analyze computers and personal devices seized in today’s arrests and subsequent searches.

This should be a reminder to everyone! When it comes to your wallets, you have to use due diligence at all times and ensure that you never, EVER, use a link to log into your exchange. Manually type in the address and always, always, always check the address bar for the correct address AND the secure padlock icon.

Don’t think that you’re too smart to fall for a trick like this. It happens to the best of us but in this day and age a simple type can cost you your entire crypto portfolio. Be smart, be safe, and be diligent folks.

There’s some bad people out there!