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Chinese crypto journalist and blogger Colin Wu shares the news that Japanese police have successfully identified and arrested a cybercriminal for the first time by tracking Monero (XMR) transactions and analyzing the collected data. did. The arrested virtual currency criminal was leading a team of about 20 people, all of whom had earned more than 100 million yen.
Mr. Wu's data was taken from today's Nikkei article, a link he published in his post.
Arrested for money laundering through XMR
According to the Nikkei Shimbun, Japan's cyber police, in coordination with other police departments, succeeded in finding and arresting 26-year-old Yuta Kobayashi. His real-life occupation remains unknown, but he is suspected of committing computer fraud and using the credit cards of unknown victims to obtain illegal profits.
The amount of damage caused by the perpetrator is estimated to exceed 100 million yen. Criminal groups tried to use the privacy coin Monero to launder stolen funds. It is designed to be highly confidential and impossible to trace the senders and recipients of these coins. However, the cyber police succeeded in identifying the suspect Kobayashi by tracing the flow of XMR. This was the first suspect identified by analyzing XMR transaction data.
The suspect was accused of listing fictitious products on the flea market site Mercari in the summer of 2021, using someone else's credit card information to trick the operating company into believing the transaction had been completed, and defrauding him of millions of yen.
From June 2021 to January 2022, a group of fraudsters conducted approximately 900 fraudulent transactions by losing the credit cards of unsuspecting people. This data may have been stolen through phishing via fake sites or fraudulent emails.
In addition to Yuta Kobayashi, 18 other cybercriminals from his team have been detained so far. These gang members advertised for “illegal part-time jobs” on social media and were hired. All communication between them and Kobayashi was done using the reliable Messenger app.
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CZ warns scammers using his name
As previously reported by U.Today, Binance exchange founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao published a tweet stating that he had noticed at least two verified X accounts impersonating him.
Although both begin with “cz”, Zhao warned the community to only use the @cz_binance X handle.
