Security News
The Russian cybercrime community, one of the most active and prolific in the world, is turning to alternative money-laundering methods due to sanctions on Russia and law enforcement actions against dark web markets. First came the bank sanctions and the blocking of SWIFT payments, a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
An Israeli national was sentenced to 97 months in prison in connection with operating the DeepDotWeb clearnet website, nearly a year after the individual pleaded guilty to the charges. He pleaded guilty to money laundering charges in March 2021 and agreed to forfeit the illegally amassed profits.
Europol has announced the arrest of 1,803 money mules out of 18,351 identified following an international money-laundering crackdown operation codenamed "EMMA 7.". O. Money mules are people who receive and transfer money on behalf of scammers and fraudsters, helping them launder the stolen amounts in exchange for a small cut.
BEC scams use various tactics to compromise or impersonate business email accounts with the end goal of redirecting pending or future payments to bank accounts under a threat actor's control. One of the case examples in the indictment document seen by Bleeping Computer, mentions a single transaction of $356,954, sent by a victim in Boston to what they thought was the bank account of their business partner.
Gift card fraud still fills a distressing niche in the cybercrime ecosystem, where a gang of crooks redeem gift cards that you paid for, either because you were convinced that those cards were earmarked for something else, or because the crooks got temporary access to one of your online accounts that allowed them to buy gift cards on your dime. The US Department of Justice announced this week the indictment of four suspected gift card scammers, and alleges that that these four had ended up with more than 5000 fradulently obtained cards to spend on themselves.
As part of its continued hardline against ransomware attacks, the U.S. Department of Treasury has prohibited anyone in the United States from conducting business with SUEX OTC, a Russian-linked currency exchange. The feds analyzed SUEX's transactions and found that the exchange facilitated transactions of illicit proceeds from at least eight ransomware variants, according to the release.
Larry Dean Harmon, the owner of a dark web cryptocurrency laundering service known as Helix, pleaded guilty today of laundering over $300 million worth of bitcoins between 2014 and 2017. "In total, Helix moved over 350,000 bitcoin - valued at over $300 million at the time of the transactions - on behalf of customers, with the largest volume coming from Darknet markets."
"Worried about dirty funds in your BTC address? Come check out Antinalysis, the new address risk analyzer," reads the service's announcement, pointing to a link only accessible via ToR. "This service is dedicated to individuals that have the need to possess complete privacy on the blockchain, offering a perspective from the opponent's point of view in order for the user to comprehend the possibility of his/her funds getting flagged down under autocratic illegal charges." "Some people might ask, why go into all that? Just cash out in XMR and be done with it. The problem is, cashing out in Monero raises eyebrows on exchanges and mail by cash method is sometimes risky as well. If you use BTC->XMR->BTC method, you'll still get flagged down by our services labelled as high risk exchange. Our service provides you with a view from LE/exchange's perspective of things that provides you with basic knowledge of how"clean" your address is.
The Security Service of Ukraine took down a network of cryptocurrency exchanges used to anonymize transactions since the beginning of 2021. "The clandestine cryptocurrency exchanges were in demand because they provided anonymity of transactions and possibility of money laundering," the SBU said.
An Israeli national has pleaded guilty to his role in operating DeepDotWeb, a website that functioned as a gateway to various Dark Web marketplaces, the U.S. Justice Department announced on Wednesday. The man, Tal Prihar, 37, together with co-defendant Michael Phan, 34, of Israel, owned and operated DeepDotWeb between October 2013 and May 2019, when the website was seized by authorities.