[14/04/2018] Bitcoin Stolen Again

[Marko Vidrih]

3.5 Million USD worth of Bitcoin Stolen from the Indian Cryptocurrency Exchange

According to CNBC, the financial and economic media of the United States, Coinsecure, the Indian cryptocurrency exchange, has lost more than US$3.5 million worth of cryptocurrency. The exchange said its security officer was responsible for absconding.

Coinsecure said on its website on Thursday that Amitabh Saxena, the company’s chief security officer, extracted Bitcoin to distribute it to customers. However, Coinsecure claims that the money was lost during this process.

Company director Mohit Kalra has sent a letter to the Indian authorities on this incident. In a document published on the company's website, Carla stated that a total of 438.318 Bitcoins were missing. According to Friday's Bitcoin price, this is equivalent to about 3.5 million USD. The company stated that the user’s funds are stored in a secure Bitcoin “wallet” and that the keys are held in the hands of Saksena and Carla; if you want to transfer the cryptocurrencies out of this “wallet”, then the key is essential.

"Because the key was kept by Dr. Sacsena, we think he made false stories to distract us and may play a role in this whole event." Carla wrote in the letter. . “The accident that Dr. Saksena reported to us was not convincing. In addition, Dr. Saksena also holds an Indian passport and he may soon fly out of the country. Therefore, his passport should be seized. He will not be able to go abroad."

CNBC has sent an e-mail to the cybercrime department of the Indian local police to confirm the truth of the matter but has not received a response.

Coinsecure said it is trying to recover the funds, but also said that it will use the company's own funds to make money to compensate its customers. CNBC has tried to contact the company and asked when the compensation process may begin, but has not received a reply. In addition, CNBC also asked whether the company had contacted Saksena, but a company spokesperson said that there was no comment beyond the statement posted on the company's website.

As for the encrypted digital currency exchange in India, this is one of the earliest large-scale theft cases.

The Indian local police issued a warning on its official website that people should not invest in encrypted digital currency because the market is "lack of legal framework."

The police said: "These encrypted digital currencies are usually used by criminals on the dark network. Legal honest companies usually do not use Bitcoin. Therefore, any requests for commercial transactions in Bitcoin should be suspected, and should be avoided."

Recently, the Central Bank of India has banned regulated financial institutions in the country from encrypting digital currency-related transactions.

Coinsecure is not the only cryptocurrency exchange in the world that has encountered this type of problem. The most striking case of its kind in the past occurred in Japan, where Coincheck traded all encrypted digital currencies worth more than 500 million USD.

Author: Marko Vidrih

[Kemarit]

Few days ago there was a report that a husband and wife in the Philippines took off with worth of millions of USD and scam their investors, fortunately they are caught. And now it looks like another black eye for all crypto enthusiast as someone stolen huge amount as well, but this time its looks like its a inside job. I don't know what tempted the security officer to ran off with the money, but I'm sure he was really looking to get a good life, but sooner or later he will regret it as he is identified and the full hands of the law will caught up on him. Maybe exchanges now needs to do a background check of their employees specially those holding very sensitive position like this security officer.

[kevoh]

The police said: "These encrypted digital currencies are usually used by criminals on the dark network. Legal honest companies usually do not use Bitcoin. Therefore, any requests for commercial transactions in Bitcoin should be suspected, and should be avoided."

The Indian police spokesperson is just wilfully dishonest. Why is the government all out to give Bitcoin a bad name? Is local currency not also used by criminals on the dark network too? Do fraudulent companies not also use local currency to defraud investors?