Security News > 2021 > August > Man Sues Parents of Teens Who Hijacked Nearly $1M in Bitcoin

When Colorado resident Andrew Schober downloaded the Electrum Atom Bitcoin wallet from Reddit, he also picked up a piece of clipboard hijacking malware that eventually redirected his 16.4552 Bitcoin to a wallet controlled by two teenagers living in the U.K. At today's price, 16.4552 Bitcoin would be worth ~$773,000.

Because they were juveniles at the time of the alleged theft, Schober is suing their parents for the nearly $1 million he lost in the heist.

"The deployment of the Malware on Mr. Schober's computer and the subsequent theft of Mr. Schober's cryptocurrency was devastating for Mr. Schober," the lawsuit said.

Schober tried to settle things out of court, his attorneys said, presenting a letter he sent to the attorney for the Thompsons and Oliver and Paul Read. "It seems your son has been using malware to steal money from people online," the letter from Schober said, adding that he had evidence of the duo's guilt, including GitHub records and repositories for Electrum Atom malware; something called Electrum Gold; and forensic analysis of the malware and Botcoin wallet, which, the letter added, "Shows multiple thefts."

The Electrum Atom wallet is a fork of the well-known Electrum Bitcoin wallet.

Schober downloaded a malicious version of Electrum cryptocurrency wallet that, according to the lawsuit, was posted on Reddit by one of the teen threat actors who promised that their wallet would allow access to "Bitcoin Atom" cryptocurrency.

News URL

https://threatpost.com/man-sues-parents-teens-hijacked-1m-bitcoin/168964/