Crypto
Cryptocurrency is hard to trace, but CCID chief says commercial tech helping cops catch up to crooks
KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 30 — Rather than cold hard cash, Malaysian criminals prefer to use cryptocurrency in their illicit activities like fraud, drug deals, robberies, selling hacked data, and ransom payments for kidnappings and murders in the Philippines.
This is because criminals perceive transactions involving cryptocurrencies as difficult to trace, Bukit Aman Commercial Crime Investigation Department director Datuk Seri Ramli Mohamed Yoosuf told Utusan Malaysia in a news report published today.
But Ramli said the police, specifically the Cryptocurrency Unit within the Bukit Aman Commercial Crime Investigation Department, is now able to identify diverse transactions with digital currencies using commercial technology.
“For instance, in the kidnapping and murder cases of Malaysians in the Philippines, PDRM successfully traced ransom payments through a crypto wallet and identified the mastermind,” he was quoted as saying, using the Malay abbreviation for the Royal Malaysia Police.
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Sharing the information with their Philippine counterpart, the authorities managed to apprehend the suspects in those cases.
“We have also identified the cryptocurrency transactions involving locals selling personal data obtained through government-owned websites,” Ramli told the Malay newspaper.
He also said that Bukit Aman’s cryptocurrency analysis unit discovered that nearly 90 per cent of cryptocurrency-related crimes are linked to investment fraud.
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He said many victims fall prey to cryptocurrency investment schemes offering unrealistic returns of 100 per cent within a short time frame, leading to losses amounting to millions of ringgit.
Citing a recent case, he said an 80-year-old woman lost RM10 million in such a scam after participating in an investment scheme promoted through the WhatsApp group “accerx.com”.
According to Ramli, a total of 5,507 cases involving cryptocurrency investment fraud were recorded between 2019 and last year, with losses amounting to approximately RM417.3 million.
He noted that a significant number of these online fraud cases occurred through social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp.
Crypto
San Francisco thief posing as delivery person steals $11M in cryptocurrency after tying up homeowner
An armed thief posing as a delivery worker invaded a San Francisco home, tied up the homeowner, and stole the victim’s cellphone, laptop, and $11 million worth of cryptocurrency over the weekend, according to a report.
The brazen heist occurred around 6:45 a.m. on Saturday at a home in San Francisco’s Mission Dolores neighborhood, according to a police report obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle.
The faux courier quickly dropped the act by brandishing a gun and tying up the victim with duct tape, the police report detailed, according to the outlet.
It’s unclear if the victim was injured or if any arrests have been made following the incident.
Additional details about the suspect and the heist were not released by cops.The San Francisco Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post.
The robbery comes amid a rise in violent kidnappings and attempted robberies of crypto investors.
In March, a group of burglars attempted to steal cryptocurrency from the home of influencer Amouranth, whose real name is Kaitlyn Siragusa. She earns around $2 million a month from selling videos on OnlyFans and gaming on Twitch.
In May, crypto bros John Woeltz, 37, and William Duplessie, 33, were accused of kidnapping and torturing an Italian millionaire, Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan, inside a New York City townhouse for his Bitcoin password.
The digital currency is much harder to trace than dollars, and considerably easier for thieves to launder.
“Kidnappings of crypto investors are definitely on the rise,” Steve Krystek, CEO of PFC Safeguards, a personal security company, previously told The Post.
“A lot of the people who come into this money are flashy, and they’re signaling that they have wealth.”
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