Popular on-chain sleuth, ZachXBT has exposed a multi-million crypto scam allegedly masterminded by three individuals. They include Malone Iam, Veer Chetal, and Jeandiel Serrano. In a series of Twitter posts, ZachXBT said the trio stole not less than $243 million in crypto from an individual via a sophisticated social engineering attack.
Renowned for exposing scams and rug pull projects, ZachXBT has built a strong reputation in the wider crypto community. The pseudonymous Twitter sleuth’s efforts to investigating on-chain fraud have played a crucial role in bringing many bad actors to book and restoring sanctity in the crypto town.
In its latest investigation, ZachXBT explained how the aforementioned suspects stole the assets of the investor. According to the sleuth, the suspects, through an elaborate multi-step fraud, impersonated Google’s customer support staff to gain unauthorized access to the account of the victim.
Suspects stole approximately 4,000 BTC from victim – ZachXBT
Also, ZachXBT said approximately 4,000 BTC worth over $243 million was stolen from the victim through ThorSwap and eXch. The suspects, according to the investigation, also quickly moved the funds to over fifteen crypto exchanges. Sharing more insights into how they shared the stolen funds, ZachXBT said Veer received a large cut from the theft.
After a successful investigation, Serrano and Malone were arrested in Miami and LA yesterday by law enforcement. More so, more than $9 billion from the stolen funds have been frozen, thanks to the collaboration between Cryptoforensic Investigators, zeroShadow, and the Binance Security team. In addition, ZachXBT said $500k has been returned to the victim at press time.
Meanwhile, the anonymous crypto investigator expects law enforcement to seize more funds and bring the suspects to justice.
Meanwhile, a few days ago, the blockchain investigator accused Circle of profiting from some transactions associated with the North Korea’s Lazarus Group. According to ZachXBT, Circle benefitted from delaying the blacklisting of the funds stolen by the hacking group. Don’t forget that the Lazarus Group allegedly stole $200 million in stablecoins between 2020 to 2023.
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