ZachXBT is an independent researcher who warned last August about the theft of millions in cryptocurrencies by a group of scammers in France. Unexpectedly, his warning paid off.
Under the title of “Scammers in Paris”, their investigation was taken care of by the police, who announced last week the arrest of five young cybercriminals.
His research generated a police intervention for the first time, assures ZachXBT in a message to AFP.
ZachXBT, who does not reveal his identity to continue with his work, tracked social networks and cryptocurrency platforms and, in doing so, revealed frauds and hacks worth around $250 million.
The “cyber detective” has 300,000 followers on Twitter, where he details his investigations step by step.
The main problem with this type of digital invasion is its relative insignificance when compared to large coups by criminal or state-backed groups.
Terrorist cyberattacks and money laundering are top priorities for authorities in Europe and the United States.
As a result, according to the US Department of Justice, only eight people were charged with small cryptocurrency-related scams during the first half of the year in the country.
Celebrity Kim Kardashian was recently fined $1.26 million for boosting a cryptocurrency on Instagram without revealing that she had been paid for it.
No official data
Specialist in tracking this type of crime and selling its service to private institutions and public agencies, such as the New York Police, the company Chainalysis confirms that scams and robberies accounted for more than US$ 3.5 billion between January and July.
AFP asked European and American departments and authorities for global data on crypto-related cybercrime, but to no avail.
Former NYPD Chief Terry Monahan explained at a recent Chainalysis symposium that before he left his post last year, the average number of complaints involving cryptocurrencies was three a day.
As they did not have the means to investigate them, the cases were shelved.
“The victim had nowhere to go,” acknowledged the former police chief. US federal agencies were only interested in multimillion-dollar cases. Small investors end up seeking help from “cyber detectives”, professionals like ZachXBT.
“I would say there is little police pursuit in the crypto space,” says the investigator.
China is particularly reluctant to its demands for collaboration. Little by little the authorities, mainly in the US, are realizing the level of fraud.
Recently, the Celsius scandal broke out, a cryptocurrency lender that went bankrupt and left a loss of $4.7 billion dollars.
Pensioners lost their savings, farmers lost their properties, small investors were totally ruined.
But not everything is bleak: companies like Chainalysis have technology that allows them to recover part of the funds, assures Monahan.
“At least we managed to give something back” to the victims, he explains.
According to Omid Malekan, a professor at Columbia University, there are increasingly sophisticated tools to unmask cybercriminals, despite the anonymity that prevails in the cryptographic world.
“Once a participant is identified”, explains the expert, “its entire history on the blockchain (computer chain where each transaction is recorded) is converted into a valuable source of data to track your entire network”.
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