Police Arrests Two People Related to $243M Crypto Heist Targeting Genesis Creditor

$243 million was stolen from a Genesis creditor on Aug. 19.
An investigation into the theft has led to two arrests, according to ZachXBT.
More than $9 million of the stolen funds have been frozen.

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Two people have been arrested following an investigation into a $243 million heist of a creditor of defunct trading firm Genesis, according to blockchain sleuth ZachXBT.

On Aug. 19, the creditor fell victim to a sophisticated social engineering scam after being contacted by a spoofed number that posed as a member of Google support.

The victim was convinced to reset their Gemini two-factor authentication settings and send funds to a compromised wallet. Transaction tracing analyzed by ZachXBT shows that the $243 million was split across multiple wallets before being sent to more than 15 exchanges.

A cluster of the stolen funds flowed into luxury goods brokers to purchase cars, watches, jewelry and designer clothes. The culprits were tied to the loot after they accidentally shared an address that has been used to purchase luxury clothing. CFInvestigators, zeroshadow, ZachXBT and Binance Security used this information to freeze more than $9 million, with $500,000 being returned to the victim.

7NewsMiami reports that FBI raided a home in Miami and ZachXBT claims that two of the cybercriminals were arrested, one of them in Los Angeles.

Both Miami and Los Angeles police departments did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.

Edited by Aoyon Ashraf.

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