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 that both his efforts and the criminals’ own blunders have already led to “multiple arrests and millions frozen.”
Scammed For 4000 BTC
In mid-August, the scammers targeted a single creditor to Genesis – the institutional Bitcoin trading desk that went bankrupt in early 2023.
First, the scammers called the victim pretending to be Google support using a spoofed phone number and gained access to the victim’s personal accounts. They then called again pretending to be Gemini support, warning the victim that their accounts were hacked.
Through this, they prompted the victim to reset his two-factor authentication and send his Gemini funds to a compromised wallet. Meanwhile, the scammers fooled the victim into downloading the remote desktop application AnyDesk, which let them see the victim’s screen, and view his private key via Bitcoin Core.
The hackers recorded their audio and screens as they celebrated pulling off the hack, which netted them 4,064 BTC worth $257 million at today’s price.
“An initial tracing showed $243M split multiple ways between each party before funds quickly peeled off to 15+ exchanges immediately swapping back and forth between Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and Monero,” added ZachXBT.
Identifying The Culprits
The investigator linked the distribution of the funds to the wallets of the parties involved with the theft. One of the three main culprits who went by “Wiz” was identified as Veer Chetal after he mistakenly leaked his full name during a screenshare.
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 Birkin bags to girls.
Box (Jeandhil Serrano), the man who called the victim as a pretend Gemini exchange rep, also spent much of his funds on luxury goods. However, ZachXBT said both Box and Greavys mistakenly linked their “dirty funds” connected to centralized exchanges with their funds that were supposed to be private on multiple occasions.
Yesterday evening, both Box and Greavys were arrested in Miami and LA. Over million of their stolen funds have been seized with help from Binance, and $500,000 has been returned back to the victim.
An indictment of the case against both individuals was unsealed later on Thursday.
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