Federal authorities seized 127,271 Bitcoin, valued at approximately $15 billion, from Chen Zhi, the alleged leader of a sprawling cybercrime network based in Cambodia, the Justice Department said Tuesday. Officials said it’s the largest financial seizure on record.
“Today’s action represents one of the most significant strikes ever against the global scourge of human trafficking and cyber-enabled financial fraud,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement.
Officials said Chen, a 38-year-old United Kingdom and Cambodian national who has renounced his Chinese citizenship, built a business empire under the Prince Group umbrella headquartered in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, that constructs, operates and manages scam compounds that rely on human trafficking and modern-day slavery.
A criminal indictment against Chen was also unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. He remains at large and the FBI is seeking information about his whereabouts. Chen faces up to 40 years in prison for his alleged crimes.
Chen is accused of founding and running Prince Group since 2015, resulting in a global expansion that has brought the cybercrime network’s operations to dozens of entities spanning more than 30 countries.
Officials said Chen was directly involved in managing the scam compounds and committed violence against people in the forced labor camps where schemes targeted victims around the world, including in the United States. One network based in Brooklyn, New York, scammed more than 250 people in New York and across the country out of millions of dollars, according to the indictment.
Officials said the sanctions against people and organizations involved with the Prince Group transnational criminal organization and its severing of Huione Group from the U.S. financial system mark the most extensive action taken against cybercrime operations in the region to date.
“The rapid rise of transnational fraud has cost American citizens billions of dollars, with life savings wiped out in minutes,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.
The agency’s Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions on 146 people and organizations participating in Prince Group TCO, while the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued a rule under the USA PATRIOT Act to sever Cambodia-based financial services conglomerate Huione Group from the U.S. financial system.
OFAC also sanctioned a network of 117 illegitimate businesses affiliated with Prince Group. The agency published a complete list of people and entities sanctioned as part of the sweeping action.
Authorities said Prince Group is prolific and remains a dominant player in Cambodia’s scam economy, responsible for billions of dollars in illicit financial transactions. U.S. government officials estimate Americans lost more than $10 billion to Southeast Asia-based scam operations last year, noting that U.S. online investment scams surpass $16.6 billion.
Huione Group has allegedly laundered proceeds from cyberattacks initiated by North Korea and transnational criminal organizations in Southeast Asia responsible for virtual currency investment scams, authorities said. The organization laundered more than $4 billion in illicit proceeds between August 2021 and January 2025, the Treasury Department said.
The U.K.’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office also participated in the crackdown by imposing sanctions on Prince Holding Group, its alleged leader Chen and key associates.
“Today, the FBI and partners executed one of the largest financial fraud takedowns in history,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement.
Security professionals and observers across the industry got swept into a pit of fear Monday when an attacker took over and injected malicious code into a series of widely used open-source packages in the node.js package manager, or npm. Despite all that worry, the disaster that many presumed a foregone conclusion was averted and the consequences of the supply-chain attack were short-lived and minimal.
Josh Junon, a developer and maintainer of the impacted software packages, took to social media early Monday to confirm his npm account was compromised via social engineering — a two-factor reset email that looked legitimate, he said. The attacker quickly posted updated software packages with payloads designed to intercept, manipulate and redirect cryptocurrency activity, according to researchers.
Apprehension fueled by the popularity of the 18 packages affected — capturing more than 2 billion downloads per week combined, according to Aikido Security — pushed some defenders to the brink of full-on freak-out mode. Ultimately, the open-source poisoning attack was successful, but impact was thwarted.
“There was a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt in sensationalized headlines about the attack,” Melissa Bischoping, senior director of security and product design research at Tanium, told CyberScoop. “The overall blast radius of the attack was relatively small, it was caught quickly, and the incident response process worked as intended. That’s a good news story, not a horror story.”
Junon said his account was restored about eight hours after he was duped by the social engineering attack, and infected versions of the packages were available for up to six hours before npm took them down and published stable versions. The most popular of the affected packages include ansi-styles, debug, chalk and supports-color.
Many expected the compromise would result in widespread cryptocurrency theft, but the downstream effects of the attack appear negligible. The attacker’s crypto address showed only $66.52, Arda Büyükkaya, senior cyber threat intelligent analyst at EclecticIQ, said in a LinkedIn post Monday.
Researchers at blockchain analytics platform Arkham have traced about $1,027 in stolen cryptocurrency to the attack as of Wednesday morning.
“While their motivation appears financial, it’s easy to see how this could have been catastrophic and reminds us of the XZ Utils breach in 2024 and others in recent memory,” Bischoping said.
Researchers from multiple security outfits described the compromise as the largest npm attack on record due to the potential scale of compromise. Fortunately, the attacker’s technical actions tipped off other developers.
“The attackers poorly used a widely known obfuscator, which led to immediate detection shortly after the malicious versions were published,” Andrey Polkovnichenko, security researcher at JFrog, said in a blog post.
While the initial wave of the attack was mostly stunted, researchers warn other npm maintainers were targeted and compromised by the same phishing campaign. Other packages known to be impacted include duckdb, proto-tinker-wc, prebid-universal-creative, prebid and prebid.js, Sonatype researchers said in a blog post Monday.
“The open-source community are so often the heroes in our industry,” Bischoping said. “The passion, dedication, and resilience of the open-source community provide value we all benefit from. Every organization should consider how they can better support, fund and contribute to open-source projects because without them the tech industry would suffer.”
Federal authorities on Monday imposed sanctions on 19 people and organizations allegedly involved in major cyberscam hubs in Burma and Cambodia.
“Criminal actors across Southeast Asia have increasingly exploited the vulnerabilities of Americans online,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement. “In 2024, Americans lost at least $10 billion to scam operations in Southeast Asia, according to a U.S. government estimate.” That’s a 66% increase from the prior year, officials said.
People who staff these scam centers are often victimized as well. Criminal organizations in Southeast Asia recruit workers under false pretenses and use debt bondage, violence, and threats of forced prostitution to coerce them to scam strangers online via messaging apps or text messages, authorities said.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control levied sanctions against nine targets operating in Shwe Kokko, Burma, which it described as a “notorious hub for virtual currency investment scams under the protection of the OFAC-designated Karen National Army.” KNA was sanctioned as a transnational criminal organization in May.
Tin Win, Saw Min Min Oo, Chit Linn Myaing Co., Chit Linn Myaing Toyota Co., Chit Linn Myaing Mining & Industry Co., Shwe Myint Thaung Yinn Industry and Manufacturing Co., She Zhijang, Yatai International Holdings Group and Myanmar Yatai International Holding Group Co. were all sanctioned for their alleged involvement in these scam centers near Burma’s border with Thailand.
She Shijiang and Saw Chit Thu, the leader of the KNA who was previously sanctioned in May, are accused of transforming a small village in Shwe Kokko into a city built for gambling, drug trafficking, prostitution and a compound of scam centers. Tin Win and Saw Min Min Oo allegedly control property that hosts the scam centers and personally run organizations that support the operations.
“Southeast Asia’s cyber scam industry not only threatens the well-being and financial security of Americans, but also subjects thousands of people to modern slavery,” John K. Hurley, under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement.
The Treasury Department also sanctioned four people and six organizations for their alleged involvement in forced labor compounds in Cambodia that operate virtual currency investment scams targeting victims in the United States, Europe, China and elsewhere.
T C Capital Co., K B Hotel Co., K B X Investment Co., M D S Heng He Investment Co., Heng He Bavet Property Co., HH Bank Cambodia, Dong Lecheng, Xu Aimin, Chen Al Len and Su Liangsheng were all sanctioned for their alleged involvement in scam centers in Cambodia.
“These sanctions protect Americans from the pervasive threat of online scam operations by disrupting the ability of criminal networks to perpetuate industrial-scale fraud, forced labor, physical and sexual abuse, and theft of Americans’ hard-earned savings,” Rubio said.
Authorities and threat intelligence analysts alike relish taking ransomware operators off the board. Holding cybercriminals accountable through arrest, imprisonment, or genuine reform creates a powerful deterrent and advances the ultimate goal of a safer internet for everyone.
Getting to that point is a remarkably tough task for defenders. Ransomware attacks are often initiated by people living in countries that aren’t bound by extradition treaties with the United States or don’t cooperate with international law enforcement. When those obstructions aren’t in place, authorities can amass resources to hunt down those responsible for cyberattacks and bring them to justice.
The fight against cybercrime is grueling, and wins don’t typically countervail the losses. For nearly a decade, police have often made high-profile announcements about arresting cybercriminals, keeping them in custody until their court dates and seizing their ill-gotten gains. These acts send a clear message to the public and potential offenders that cybercrime is a serious offense, and authorities are taking swift, visible measures to uphold the law.
Ianis Aleksandrovich Antropenko exemplifies the profile of a modern cybercriminal, yet, unlike many others who have faced strict prosecution for similar offenses, the Justice Department has granted him liberties rarely extended to such suspects.
The 36-year-old Russian national was arrested almost a year ago in California for his alleged involvement in multiple ransomware attacks from at least May 2018 to August 2022. Yet, he was released on bail the day of his arrest and continues to live with few restrictions in Southern California awaiting trial for multiple felonies.
Antropenko is charged with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and abuse, computer fraud and abuse, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He is accused of using Zeppelin ransomware to attack multiple people, businesses and organizations globally, including victims based in the U.S.
Antropenko pleaded not guilty to the charges in October.
The Justice Department recently announced it seized more than $2.8 million in cryptocurrency, nearly $71,000 in cash and two luxury vehicles from Antropenko in February 2024. His alleged crimes were publicly revealed for the first time last month when authorities unsealed various court documents.
Photo of Antropenko posted to his public Instagram account March 10, 2023. (Instagram)
Antropenko’s arrest and pending trial marks another potential win against ransomware, but many experts told CyberScoop they are stunned he remains free on bail. This rare flash of deferment in a case involving a prolific alleged cybercriminal is even more shocking considering his multiple run-ins with police since his 2024 arrest.
Antropenko violated conditions for his pretrial release at least three times in a four-month period this year, including two arrests in California involving dangerous behavior while under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Authorities haven’t explained why Antropenko was released pending trial, nor why parole officers and a judge repeatedly allowed him to remain out of jail following these infractions.
“On average, most ransomware actors, if they are brought into custody, are remanded because of a flight risk,” said Cynthia Kaiser, senior vice president of the ransomware research center at Halcyon.
“It’s rare to have a ransomware actor in U.S. custody,” the former deputy assistant director at the FBI Cyber Division told CyberScoop. “Typically, if the FBI believes that the person is a flight risk it would make the case for bond to be denied.”
Prosecutors in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas did not flag Antropenko as a flight risk in this case.
In the past year, other alleged ransomware suspects or cybercriminals — Noah Urban, Cameron Wagenius, Connor Moucka and Artem Stryzhak among them — were all detained pending trial. Urban, who was sentenced last month to 10 years in prison, and Wagenius, who has pleaded guilty to some charges, were arrested in the United States. Moucka and Stryzhak were arrested elsewhere and extradited to the U.S.
Pretrial treatment of cybercrime suspects hasn’t always adhered to strict norms, especially when the accused’s mental health status was taken into account. Paige Thompson, who was arrested in July 2019 for hacking and stealing data from Capital One and dozens of other organizations for a cryptocurrency mining scheme, was deemed a “serious flight risk” by prosecutors, but still released pending trial four months later.
A U.S. district judge in Seattle determined Thompson didn’t pose a threat to the community and previously told attorneys he was “very concerned” that Thompson would not receive adequate mental health treatment from the Bureau of Prisons.
Thompson was found guilty of multiple counts and sentenced in October 2022 to time served and five years of probation, much to the chagrin of prosecutors. A federal appeals court overruled the district court judge’s sentence earlier this year, calling the punishment “substantially unreasonable.”
Yevgeniy Nikulin, a Russian national arrested in October 2016 on charges related to breaching a database containing 117 million passwords from LinkedIn, Dropbox and other services, was extradited to the U.S. from the Czech Republic in 2018 and ruled fit to stand trial, despite exhibiting mental illness symptoms throughout his incarceration and trial. He was detained pending trial and sentenced to 88 months in prison in September 2020.
Notwithstanding these variances in previous cases, some experts are struck by other irregularities in Antropenko’s case, including his conditions of release. He is not banned from using the internet or computers, but limited to devices and services disclosed during supervision that are subject to monitoring.
More lenient conditions of release are typically offered in exchange for cooperation, according to threat analysts and a former FBI special agent who specialized in cybersecurity investigations.
“The investigators that tracked him down will certainly want to know who the bigger fish are, and they’ll want to figure out who else they could take down,” the former FBI special agent, speaking on condition of anonymity, told CyberScoop. “If he’s willing to cooperate, then normally the federal system will do good things for you.”
Authorities imposed travel restrictions on Antropenko, required him to surrender his passport, banned him from entering a Russian embassy or consulate and are monitoring his location.
Bad behavior going back years
The federal case against Antropenko accentuates how finite resources can put law enforcement and federal investigators at a disadvantage as they confront a constant crush of cybercrime.
The FBI and prosecutors accuse Antropenko of deploying ransomware and extorting victims by email, and implicate him and his ex-wife, Valeriia Bednarchik, in the laundering of ransomware proceeds. Investigators traced the path of ransom payments, money laundering techniques and services, and determined the seized accounts, cash and vehicles were derived from criminal proceeds.
The FBI said it found at least 48 cryptocurrency addresses referenced in Antropenko’s email account — china.helper@aol.com, which he registered in May 2018 — including “emails that received or negotiated ransom payments” and emails about other ransomware attacks.
A cluster of Bitcoin addresses owned by Antropenko “had received a total of approximately 101 Bitcoin” as of Feb. 5, 2024. Out of this amount, 64.6 Bitcoin was sent to the cryptocurrency mixing service ChipMixer, according to the FBI. As of today’s rates, the current value of 101 Bitcoin is almost $10.9 million.
The 2023 takedown of ChipMixer, which was used by criminals to launder more than $3 billion in cryptocurrency starting in 2017, provided crucial evidence for this investigation, according to Ian Gray, VP of intelligence at Flashpoint.
“Only after law enforcement seized ChipMixer’s infrastructure could investigators trace the funds linked to accounts registered in Antropenko’s name,” he said. “The sophistication of Bitcoin tracing and clustering techniques also likely contributed to the timing, as law enforcement has adopted software and tools more widely.”
Prosecutors allege that Antropenko and Bednarchik funneled money from computer fraud victims through ChipMixer, then back to their own exchange accounts. Antropenko also allegedly arranged in-person cryptocurrency-to-cash swaps in the U.S., depositing the cash in small sums under $10,000 into his bank account.
FBI investigators traced Antropenko’s activities via accounts he held at Proton Mail, PayPal and Bank of America, and accounts he and Bednarchik controlled at Binance and Apple. In Bednarchik’s iCloud account, agents found a seed phrase for a crypto wallet that had received over 40 Bitcoin from Antropenko’s accounts, as well as evidence she had agreed to safeguard a disguised copy of this phrase so the funds could be accessed if Antropenko became unavailable. Her account also contained joint tax returns with Antropenko and photos showing large amounts of U.S. cash.
In the indictment filed against Antropenko, authorities included two images of U.S. cash in a Louis Vuitton shopping bag that investigators said they found on Bednarchik’s iCloud account. Metadata from the photos showed they were taken within 21 seconds of each other on April 10, 2022.The second photo shows approximately half of the cash removed with a note affixed to the remaining cash written in Cyrillic and English. The English portion of the note reads: “I took half 50000$ from 100000$”
Authorities also seized cash and two luxury vehicles from the apartment Antropenko and Bednarchik once shared in Irvine, Calif. This included a Lexus LX 570 that Antropenko purchased for more than $123,000 in November 2022 and a 2022 BMW X6M that Antropenko and Bednarchik purchased for $150,000 in cash in November 2021. Photos of vehicles matching those descriptions are depicted on Antropenko’s public Instagram account.
Ransomware operators have been assisted by their spouses in other cases, but their partners’ involvement is typically limited to money laundering, Allan Liska, threat intelligence analyst at Recorded Future, told CyberScoop.
While many ransomware operators and affiliates operate outside of Russia now, it is rare for a Russian national to live in the U.S. while initiating ransomware attacks for as long as Antropenko allegedly did, Liska said.
“It sounds like he may have had additional information about other people, maybe bigger fish that law enforcement could go after,” he said.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas declined to answer questions or provide additional information. The most recent attorney on record for Antropenko did not respond to a request for comment.
Antropenko didn’t just inflict damages on his cybercrime victims, as alleged by prosecutors. His volatility erupted around those closest to him, according to Bednarchik, who accused him of domestic violence in temporary restraining orders she filed against Antropenko in April and May 2022.
Bednarchik has been identified as Antropenko’s unnamed co-conspirator through court documents and public records. While authorities said they plan to bring charges against her, no cases are currently pending.
In court filings, Bednarchik painted a picture of a controlling relationship, writing that Antropenko “constantly threatens me with full custody of our son, because he has a lot of money” and expressing fears he might take their child to Russia without permission.
Photo of a BMW X6M posted to Antropenko’s public Instagram account Dec. 14, 2021. The car matches the description of the vehicle authorities seized in Irvine, California, February 2024. (Instagram)
Court records reveal the family lived together in Miami and later Irvine until 2022. Despite Bednarchik reporting only $800 monthly income from her clothing business, she estimated Antropenko earned $50,000 per month from “cryptocurrency dividends,” describing him as “the breadwinner for the family.”
When Antropenko was arrested in September 2024, Bednarchik posted his $10,000 bail, identifying herself in the affidavit as his ex-wife.
“She’s either being redacted because she’s a victim or because she is collaborating with law enforcement and has been able to get her name redacted,” Zach Edwards, senior threat analyst at Silent Push, told CyberScoop.
Antropenko’s ties to Zeppelin ransomware
Authorities did not describe the extent to which Antropenko was involved with Zeppelin ransomware. Prosecutors mention unnamed co-conspirators in some court documents, indicating they are investigating or aware of others involved in the ransomware-as-a-service operation.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said Zeppelin ransomware victims include a wide range of businesses and critical infrastructure organizations, including defense contractors, educational institutions, manufacturers, technology companies and organizations in the health care and medical industries.
Zeppelin, a variant of the Delphi-based Vega malware, was used from at least 2019 to mid-2022, the agency said in an August 2022 advisory. A ransom note included in CISA’s advisory listed an AOL address for communication regarding extortion payments.
Prosecutors and investigators working on Antropenko’s case said Zeppelin ransomware affected about 138 U.S. victims since March 2020, including a data analysis company and its CEO based in the Dallas region where Antropenko faces federal charges.
Prosecutors have consistently declared the case against Antropenko “complex,” with evidence surpassing 7 terabytes of data, including personally identifiable information of victims, such as names, addresses, photos and bank account numbers.
Zeppelin and Antropenko’s alleged activities rose during the second wave of ransomware, when many cybercriminals were winging it and law enforcement activity was at a lull, Liska said. “If you start off with a mistake, that mistake is going to catch up to you,” he said.
Indeed, threat researchers and analysts attribute Antropenko’s capture to “sloppy” behaviors and practices, including his use of major U.S. service providers.
“Antropenko’s operational security was remarkably poor,” Gray said.
“He used a personal PayPal account linked to recovery emails for ransomware operations, shared usernames between banking and ransomware accounts, and stored sensitive information like cryptocurrency seed phrases and photos of large cash amounts in iCloud accounts,” he continued. “These OPSEC failures ultimately led to law enforcement identifying Antropenko.”
Pretrial release violations
While prosecutors push Antropenko’s trial date further down the road — currently set for Feb. 6, 2026 — his personal life has been unraveling. He was hospitalized on a mental health hold on Dec. 31, 2024, and spent a week in a behavioral health hospital, according to a pretrial release violation report.
Antropenko told his probation officer that his ex-wife took his son from him unexpectedly, which led to a significant bout of depression and increase in alcohol consumption. “While walking around his RV park intoxicated, he was approached by an individual who offered him an unknown drug,” which he assumed was some type of methamphetamine, Antropenko’s probation officer wrote in the court filing.
Antropenko said he had little recollection of the events that followed. Once he was placed in a police car after law enforcement arrived the following morning, “he assumed he was being arrested which exacerbated his depression, prompting him to bang his head on the window of the police car, after which he recalls regaining consciousness in the hospital,” the probation officer said. No charges were filed.
Almost two months later, Antropenko was arrested for public intoxication in Riverside County, Calif., when he was found laying unresponsive in the center divider of a roadway. Antropenko told his probation officer he sat down on a curb near his home to smoke a cigarette after consuming four to five beers and was feeling tired, so he fell asleep. He was released the following day.
A U.S. magistrate judge in Texas allowed Antropenko to remain out on bond and modified the conditions of his release to include a ban on alcohol consumption and submit to regular alcohol testing.
“It strikes me as unusual to have so many drug violations and stay out on bail,” Kaiser said. “It would be overly lenient if they were still perpetrating crimes obviously against others. It appears he’s harming himself.”
In April, Antropenko contacted his parole officer to make an unsolicited admission to cocaine use, according to a court document filed in May. “The defendant stated that he attended a birthday celebration for a friend’s sister. When he went to the restroom some ‘random people’ offered him a ‘bump of cocaine,’” his probation officer said. The court took no further action.
“Even if he is a cooperating witness, he has been given a lot of freedom, a lot more freedom than we normally see in this case,” Liska said. “I can’t think of any case, of anybody this high profile, that has been given this level of freedom, cooperating or not.”
Edwards is also dismayed Antropenko remains out on bail pending trial.
“It’s wild that a citizen from Russia who has been accused of partnering with serious global threat actors and is out on bail for leading a ransomware campaign, has been arrested multiple times for issues associated with alcohol, including passing out on a street in public, and also admitted to using cocaine while out on bail, and yet his bail hasn’t been revoked,” he said.
Former law enforcement officials were less shocked about the circumstances of Antropenko’s case than security analysts.
Adam Marrè, chief information security officer at Arctic Wolf, said the post-arrest privileges granted to Antropenko aren’t that odd, especially since Antropenko’s alleged pretrial release violations don’t have anything to do with cybercrime.
Marrè said Antropenko’s alleged violations would have frustrated him when he was a special agent at the FBI investigating cybercrime, but he understands the court’s decisions, adding “people are innocent until proven guilty.”
It’s important to note the FBI is focused on outcomes, according to Kaiser. “Getting money back to victims who were stolen from is more important than punishing some guy, especially if he’s not doing [ransomware] activities anymore,” she said.
“It’s hard to arrest these people in the first place and stop them, which means it’s very complicated to deter them over a long period of time,” Kaiser added. “There’s no one arrest that’s going to stop these types of activities.”
U.S. officials imposed sanctions Thursday on Russian cryptocurrency exchange Garantex, its successor Grinex, and related affiliates, while also targeting its leaders for arrest with financial rewards. These measures are part of intensified efforts to halt the flow of ransomware proceeds facilitated by the platforms.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control re-designated Garantex for sanctions, accusing its operators of processing more than $100 million in illicit transactions since 2019. The State Department announced financial rewards totaling up to $6 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Garantex’s leaders, including up to $5 million for Russian national Aleksandr Mira Serda, the exchange’s co-founder and chief commercial officer.
Authorities expanded their targeting of Garantex, its leaders and associated companies following a sweeping international law enforcement operation in March when officials seized three domains linked to the exchange, confiscated servers, froze more than $26 million in cryptocurrency and indicted its leaders.
One of those leaders, Aleksej Besciokov, was arrested in March while on vacation in India shortly after the Justice Department unsealed indictments against him and Mira Serda, officials said. OFAC also imposed sanctions on Sergey Mendelev, co-founder of Garantex, and Pavel Karavatsky, co-owner and regional director of Garantex.
“According to the U.S. Secret Service and FBI, Garantex received hundreds of millions in criminal proceeds and was used to facilitate various crimes, including hacking, ransomware, terrorism, and drug trafficking, often with substantial harm to U.S. victims,” Tammy Bruce, spokesperson for the State Department, said in a statement Thursday. “Between April 2019 and March 2025, Garantex processed at least $96 billion in cryptocurrency transactions.”
Before Garantex moved its operations and funds to Grinex following the globally coordinated law enforcement disruption, the exchange received millions of dollars in cryptocurrency from Russia-linked ransomware affiliates. Officials traced those transactions to Conti, Black Basta, LockBit, Ryuk, NetWalker and Phoenix Cryptolocker.
Grinex, which was created to avoid the sanctions placed on Garantex, has since facilitated the transfer of billions of dollars in cryptocurrency transactions, the Treasury Department said. The Treasury Department’s OFAC initially sanctioned Garatex in April 2022.
OFAC sanctioned six additional organizations Thursday, including A7, A7 Agent, Old Vector, InDeFi Bank and Exved for their alleged involvement with and material support of Garantex and Grinex.
“Exploiting cryptocurrency exchanges to launder money and facilitate ransomware attacks not only threatens our national security, but also tarnishes the reputations of legitimate virtual asset service providers,” John K. Hurley, under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement. “By exposing these malicious actors, Treasury remains committed to and supportive of the digital asset industry’s integrity.”
Coindoo reports: Physical attacks on cryptocurrency holders are rising sharply this year, with security experts warning that 2025 could become the most dangerous year yet for investors. At the Baltic Honeybadger conference in Riga, SatoshiLabs founder Alena Vranova described a wave of “wrench attacks” — kidnappings, assaults, and extortion aimed at forcing victims to surrender...
The FBI released a trove of research on The Com last week, warning that the sprawling cybercriminal network of minors and young adults is growing rapidly and splintering into three primary subsets described by officials as Hacker Com, In Real Life Com and Extortion Com.
The warnings lay out how The Com’s thousands of members, typically between 11 and 25 years old, pose a rising threat, especially to youth online, the FBI said. Criminal acts committed by these multiple, interconnected networks include swatting, extortion and sextortion of minors, production and distribution of child sexual abuse material, violent crime and various other cybercrimes, the bureau said.
“The motivations behind the criminal activity vary, but often fall within one of the following: financial gain, retaliation, ideology, sexual gratification and notoriety,” the FBI said in a public service announcement.
Crimes attributed to members of The Com have grown increasingly complex, with perpetrators going to great lengths to mask identities, hide financial transactions and launder money. The Com generally targets young and impressionable people for recruitment on gaming sites and social media platforms to indoctrinate them into their ideology, officials said.
Various subsections of this group have been linked to high-profile crimes over the past few years. In April, two men accused of leading a Com offshoot known as “764” were charged with operating an international child exploitation enterprise. Scattered Spider, another offshoot, tends to focus on cybercrime like ransomware and data extortion.
Allison Nixon, chief research officer at Unit 221B, commended the level of detail the FBI shared across the series of PSAs, noting that the agency left nothing of importance out of its warnings. Nixon has studied domestic and English-speaking cybercrime and tracked its rise for more than a decade.
“The assessments in this PSA are consistent with what we have seen. There has been a population explosion in The Com and it is good to see law enforcement respond to this — not just with a PSA but with real crackdowns,” she said.
“Hopefully this PSA helps the public understand that many cybercrime arrests nowadays implicate gang violence and sexual crime against children, by children.”
Hacker Com
Hacker Com members are involved in a vast array of cybercrime activities, including distributed denial-of-service attacks, personally identifiable information theft, the sale of government email accounts, ransomware attacks, phishing, malware development and deployment, cryptocurrency theft, intrusions and SIM swapping, according to the FBI.
Scattered Spider, which is responsible for attacks on more than 100 businesses since 2022, is included in this subset.
This subset of The Com uses remote access trojans, phishing kits, voice over internet protocol providers, voice modulators, virtual private networks, cryptocurrency cash-out services, live-streaming services and encrypted email domains, officials said.
“Open-source information indicates Hacker Com groups are responsible for high-profile attacks and intrusions and have affiliations with ransomware organizations,” the FBI said in a PSA dedicated solely to Hacker Com.
The group also has been observed using the same attack methods against each other. The FBI warning details how internal conflicts are common among members of The Com. Personal disputes or rivalries — often over cryptocurrency — frequently lead Hacker Com members to attack and steal from one another, the FBI said.
In Real Life (IRL) Com
Some Com subgroups have gone beyond digital means, offering swat-for-hire services and targeting members for swatting and doxxing, kidnapping and physical extortion, which the FBI refers to as “IRL Com.”
“The intensification of these online conflicts has resulted in the emergence of a new layer of The Com known as In Real Life (IRL) Com, which includes subgroups that aim to facilitate real world acts of violence, oftentimes resulting from online conflicts,” the FBI said.
Acts of physical violence have intensified and expanded to other layers of The Com, as multiple subgroups adopt similar methods of retaliation, the FBI said in a PSA dedicated solely to IRL Com. Some subgroups advertise contracts on messaging apps or other social media networks to commit violence or swatting for payment.
“IRL Com groups also see swatting as a way of gaining credibility among members; the more attention a swatting incident gets, the more attention the member receives from the group,” the FBI said. “Leaders from IRL Com groups may use swatting to ensure members of the group remain obedient. When members of the IRL Com group disobey orders or refuse to comply with demands, the member or the member’s family may become the target of swatting.”
Extortion Com
The FBI also released a PSA about a subgroup it calls “Extortion Com,” which “systematically targets underage females” and vulnerable populations, including children and those who struggle with mental health issues.
“Victims are typically between the ages of 10 and 17 years old, but the FBI has seen some victims as young as 9 years old,” the FBI said in its PSA. “Threat actors often groom their victims by first establishing a trusting or romantic relationship before eventually manipulating and coercing them into engaging in escalating harmful behavior designed to shame and isolate them.”
Officials said these acts are driven by a range of personal motives, including the pursuit of social status, sexual gratification or a sense of belonging.
The FBI warns that members of this subgroup manipulate or coerce their victims to produce pornographic material or other videos depicting animal cruelty and self-harm, oftentimes further threatening to share the material with victims’ families, friends or other public communities on the internet.
Two alleged leaders of the child sextortion group 764 were arrested and charged for directing and distributing CSAM in April. The two men, Leonidas Varagiannis and Prasan Nepal, are accused of exploiting at least eight minor victims, some as young as 13 years old, and face charges that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.
Officials advised people to look for warning signs that a victim may be targeted by The Com and shared resources for help, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s CyberTipline and Take It Down service. Victims are encouraged to retain all information about an incident and immediately report to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center and an FBI Field Office.
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