Sextortion - more than 4000 BTC cashed

[temple]

A sextortion victim received a mail to pay $1000 in bitcoin within 48h to address 1GYNGZLEUGkkQjHo19dHDnGE87WsAiGLLB otherwise, a captured intimate video of the victim is sent to all his email contacts. Can the extortionist be tracked down with only knowledge of the Bitcoin address? In this case the wanted person doesn't seem to be the brightest candle on the cake.

A free short analysis with our "Bitcoin privacy check" tool already shows the connection to a Binance client:. For less than $100 a report is available from forensicsone showing that the address sent funds to a binance deposit address.

But the amazing thing is that despite the naive approach, the extortionist was able to collect many millions of $ (more than 4,000 BTC) from thousands of people, even though Binance already demands KYC at 2 BTC and there were hundreds of criminal complaints at the police.

I conclude that our police simply do not have enough experts to follow up on something like this.

They would have other options as well and even if there is a limit of 2 BTC per account per day, they could also just create dozens of accounts and circumvent the 2 BTC threshold. As far as I know that is an issue that Binance is now dealing with anyway in regards to an investigation that is taking place for their exchange.
There are other services which don't ask for KYC either. Isn't Shapeshift also without KYC again?

[TimeTeller]

This is a typical email scam. When our emails has been exploited by these scammers, they're going to send us that message that they've seen us do naughty things online and we've watched some things that we shouldn't watch. And they really are going to extort us and there's an instruction for those newbies how to buy bitcoin. I've received one and I can't remember which website I've signed up for that email but it's scaring those people that lacks of knowledge about this scam.

If the user knows that he did not do anything that will compromise his identity, then, why be scared of these scam emails?
Sometimes, there are really gullible people that get scared from empty threats of these scammers.
It will only stop if people will not give in to these scammers and just ignore them.
The reason why they are proliferating is that there are people that really do pay them.

[Lanatsa]

A sextortion victim received a mail to pay $1000 in bitcoin within 48h to address 1GYNGZLEUGkkQjHo19dHDnGE87WsAiGLLB otherwise, a captured intimate video of the victim is sent to all his email contacts. Can the extortionist be tracked down with only knowledge of the Bitcoin address? In this case the wanted person doesn't seem to be the brightest candle on the cake.

A free short analysis with our "Bitcoin privacy check" tool already shows the connection to a Binance client:. For less than $100 a report is available from forensicsone showing that the address sent funds to a binance deposit address.

But the amazing thing is that despite the naive approach, the extortionist was able to collect many millions of $ (more than 4,000 BTC) from thousands of people, even though Binance already demands KYC at 2 BTC and there were hundreds of criminal complaints at the police.

I conclude that our police simply do not have enough experts to follow up on something like this.

They would have other options as well and even if there is a limit of 2 BTC per account per day, they could also just create dozens of accounts and circumvent the 2 BTC threshold. As far as I know that is an issue that Binance is now dealing with anyway in regards to an investigation that is taking place for their exchange.
There are other services which don't ask for KYC either. Isn't Shapeshift also without KYC again?

Coinswitch.co had recently changed up into KYC instant exchange which Shapeshift had done it more earlier time so I don't expect for some revocation or changes or make out some reversion.

Im not sure that you wont really be banned nor locked account on creating multiple binance account on few devices but if this one isn't detected then cashing out 4000 btc wont really be a problem.

These kind of incidents or aren't something new where people or criminals would be finding out lots of ways for them to scam or extort people for getting some coins.

[dkbit98]

The 1GYNGZ... address he used successfully with about 10 victims but there are thousands others all ending up in the 1JsAC.... in total more than 4000 BTC. The scammer followed Satoshis advice not to use always the same address a bit.

I am really not surprised anymore after year 2020/201 how people can be ultra stupid, not using their brain and not doing any research before trusting anything they hear or read in email or mainstream news.
One guy even commented that his father was very worried about this sextortion email he received, and than his son had to remind him that they don't even have webcam on their computer.
Fear Sells the best, just don't buy it.

[passwordnow]

This is a typical email scam. When our emails has been exploited by these scammers, they're going to send us that message that they've seen us do naughty things online and we've watched some things that we shouldn't watch. And they really are going to extort us and there's an instruction for those newbies how to buy bitcoin. I've received one and I can't remember which website I've signed up for that email but it's scaring those people that lacks of knowledge about this scam.

If the user knows that he did not do anything that will compromise his identity, then, why be scared of these scam emails?
Sometimes, there are really gullible people that get scared from empty threats of these scammers.
It will only stop if people will not give in to these scammers and just ignore them.
The reason why they are proliferating is that there are people that really do pay them.

Yes, there's no need to be scared but we're not all the same in handling situations like this. A user that can easily move is when he reads that email and thinks that it's a legit thing that the scammer actually hacked his/her PC and will likely fall for the scam. It's not sometimes, but most of the time there really are victims that would just pay attention to the instruction of the scammer and will pay for the asked amount. We're not all literate on these situations that's why it's the sad part that these scammers still gets victims.

[Vishnu.Reang]

Fake KYC documents are easily available in the dark net and therefore KYC is not going to resolve this issue. If you ask me, I would say that it is possible to track down the criminal using the Bitcoin address. But it is extremely difficult and I will explain why. In all probability, the hacker had used a fresh Bitcoin address without any transactions to receive the ransom payment. So unless he moves his coins to an exchange or a P2P platform, it is impossible to trace back the identity of the criminal. And the hackers are very innovative nowadays. They usually wait for 1-2 years to cash out their coins.

[avikz]

A sextortion victim received a mail to pay $1000 in bitcoin within 48h to address 1GYNGZLEUGkkQjHo19dHDnGE87WsAiGLLB otherwise, a captured intimate video of the victim is sent to all his email contacts. Can the extortionist be tracked down with only knowledge of the Bitcoin address? In this case the wanted person doesn't seem to be the brightest candle on the cake.

A free short analysis with our "Bitcoin privacy check" tool already shows the connection to a Binance client:. For less than $100 a report is available from forensicsone showing that the address sent funds to a binance deposit address.

But the amazing thing is that despite the naive approach, the extortionist was able to collect many millions of $ (more than 4,000 BTC) from thousands of people, even though Binance already demands KYC at 2 BTC and there were hundreds of criminal complaints at the police.

I conclude that our police simply do not have enough experts to follow up on something like this.

It's extremely difficult to track the owner of a particular wallet. Even though it's not impossible. This difficulty in tracing can be amplified through the use of bitcoin mixers. That's the reason why cyber criminals around the world uses cryptocurrency only. Take example from the recent attack on an American pipeline.

There are many ways to cash out such illegally obtained bitcoins. They can use bitcoin mixers to hide the trail of bitcoins and the sell off in any p2p marketplaces. Bot all p2p marketplaces require kyc until you reach a certain volume. There are darknet markets are well. It's unfortunate that bitcoin is actually empowering these miscreants.

[BTCtester.com]

They can make multiple account and withdraw less than 2 BTC from each account. Simple. And the police do have experts, they just don't fucking care.

Yes they could, but even then Binance is monitoring meta data like screen resolution, Operating and browser system and version etc. and would recognize it. In this specific case the scammer did transactions above the 2BTC limit however.

[BTCtester.com]

It's extremely difficult to track the owner of a particular wallet. Even though it's not impossible. This difficulty in tracing can be amplified through the use of bitcoin mixers. That's the reason why cyber criminals around the world uses cryptocurrency only. Take example from the recent attack on an American pipeline.

There are many ways to cash out such illegally obtained bitcoins. They can use bitcoin mixers to hide the trail of bitcoins and the sell off in any p2p marketplaces. Bot all p2p marketplaces require kyc until you reach a certain volume. There are darknet markets are well. It's unfortunate that bitcoin is actually empowering these miscreants.

It's not so difficult but the police has no time and the victims think it's not possible so they don't try. Such a scammer is involved in thousands of transactions and only one little mistake and the analytics software will catch him. If not now then somewhere in future. So no scammer can sleep calm. The scammers brain may be think two or three steps deep  in the blockchain but the software finds far deeper connections. Mixers and Monero forth and back might help but the scammers get lost in the high number of addresses to administrate and co-spend coins after mixing with other ones and the house of cards collapses. I was able to link more than 20% of a  Wasabi Coinjoin transaction outputs to their inputs because of this users mistake. And this doesn't mean for 80% it works. It means if the scammer is doing 1000 transactions and fails on one then he will be caught earlier or later if the loss is not too low.

[Miaallen]

Most of these sextortionists do not really have any video to blackmail you with in the first place. They just toy with your emotions and take a cheap advantages of it.

I've received more than 20 of such threats asking me to send Bitcoin or they will share my private videos which I believe they do not have.

And that the transactions have been traced through the wallet to a binance account should have made it easy for the police to arrest the guy if they really want to do it except the court needs additional evidence to compel the Binance to expose the identity of such blackmailer.

[LoyceMobile]

All this could be prevented with a piece of tape on your camera.

[temple]

A sextortion victim received a mail to pay $1000 in bitcoin within 48h to address 1GYNGZLEUGkkQjHo19dHDnGE87WsAiGLLB otherwise, a captured intimate video of the victim is sent to all his email contacts. Can the extortionist be tracked down with only knowledge of the Bitcoin address? In this case the wanted person doesn't seem to be the brightest candle on the cake.

A free short analysis with our "Bitcoin privacy check" tool already shows the connection to a Binance client:. For less than $100 a report is available from forensicsone showing that the address sent funds to a binance deposit address.

But the amazing thing is that despite the naive approach, the extortionist was able to collect many millions of $ (more than 4,000 BTC) from thousands of people, even though Binance already demands KYC at 2 BTC and there were hundreds of criminal complaints at the police.

I conclude that our police simply do not have enough experts to follow up on something like this.

They would have other options as well and even if there is a limit of 2 BTC per account per day, they could also just create dozens of accounts and circumvent the 2 BTC threshold. As far as I know that is an issue that Binance is now dealing with anyway in regards to an investigation that is taking place for their exchange.
There are other services which don't ask for KYC either. Isn't Shapeshift also without KYC again?

Coinswitch.co had recently changed up into KYC instant exchange which Shapeshift had done it more earlier time so I don't expect for some revocation or changes or make out some reversion.

Im not sure that you wont really be banned nor locked account on creating multiple binance account on few devices but if this one isn't detected then cashing out 4000 btc wont really be a problem.

These kind of incidents or aren't something new where people or criminals would be finding out lots of ways for them to scam or extort people for getting some coins.

Didn't Shapeshift send out emails a while ago where they let everybody know that they relocated or they could manage to find a place from where they can operate so that they can refrain from KYC? I will read up on that but if you don't want to undergo KYC there are still enough places and options where you can circumvent KYC procedures. When cross-chain transactions are possible there will be no KYC at all one day.

[uneng]

Most of these sextortionists do not really have any video to blackmail you with in the first place. They just toy with your emotions and take a cheap advantages of it.

I've received more than 20 of such threats asking me to send Bitcoin or they will share my private videos which I believe they do not have.

And that the transactions have been traced through the wallet to a binance account should have made it easy for the police to arrest the guy if they really want to do it except the court needs additional evidence to compel the Binance to expose the identity of such blackmailer.

Some time ago I was used to receive at least one of those emails a day, always the same threats, content and claims that they put a virus on the computer which triggered the webcam. The best to do is just to ignore such messages. If the victim gives the blackmailer some kind of attention, the situation may become much more problematic. Another option is to just contact the police, but the person has to expose himself.
Anyway, situations like this are a good warning to let people aware they should be more cautious regards their privacy and to not trust electronic devices to store intimate data or to exhibit themselves in front of these gadgets.

[7788bitcoin]

All this could be prevented with a piece of tape on your camera.

Looks like you are moving around while covering all the camera in your household  . Just make sure that you are not clicking any malware links and visit any shady websites and that will be more than helpful rather than covering with tape and if anyone is able to spend a few hours to lean how to make your digital devices secure and how to check your root about new installation then you are good to go .

If i am in that situation i am not going to spend a dime to save my ass from embarrassment 

[Vishnu.Reang]

All this could be prevented with a piece of tape on your camera.

If the victim had taken these sort of basic precautions, then he wouldn't have landed himself in this situation, right? These sort of blackmail tricks usually occur in third world countries, where the people lack knowledge about how to deal with cyber crime. Even in my area, there were a few instances of such sextortion attempts.

Here is the methodology - the criminals would receive WhatsApp or Facebook contacts through various means. The next step is that the female members of the gang would call the victim (either through video or audio). If the victim is really stupid, then he will think that some unknown female has suddenly become sexually attracted to him and will start sex chat with the gang member. Once the gang receive enough evidence, they will record everything and use the material for extortion and blackmail. In most of the cases, they target married men and this makes sure that the victims in most cases don't file a police complaint.

Even I have received video calls from unknown numbers in my WhatsApp account. I was careful enough to reject the call and block the number from which the call was being made.

[Botnake]

How about putting the source of the story, I like to check the full details.

4000 is too big, I check the address used and it's just less than 1 btc, so where are the others going?

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1GYNGZLEUGkkQjHo19dHDnGE87WsAiGLLB

[acener]

If they know how to clean their coins I don't think that they would be discovered at all just look at how many cryptocurrency scammer is around the internet,
And I think only few of them got arrested there are so many ways to clean up their track,
And even if they had a transaction on Binance how would they even know if the account information is real and even the IP address that has been used to access the account isn't from public space?
I hope that those criminals would get caught but it would really be so hard with just a little information.

[Swordsoffreedom]

A sextortion victim received a mail to pay $1000 in bitcoin within 48h to address 1GYNGZLEUGkkQjHo19dHDnGE87WsAiGLLB otherwise, a captured intimate video of the victim is sent to all his email contacts.

I have been blackmailed like this a long time ago, embezzling money by making such threats online is nothing new. They somehow managed to find a password I was using and tried to blackmail me with it. But I did not hesitate to tell them that you can do whatever you want, I don't care. I refuse to do any kind of mutual. Even though they were mailing me over and over again, I just simply ignored it. At one point they stopped threatening.

[BTCtester.com]

How about putting the source of the story, I like to check the full details.

4000 is too big, I check the address used and it's just less than 1 btc, so where are the others going?

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1GYNGZLEUGkkQjHo19dHDnGE87WsAiGLLB

Somewhere in the middle of this page I found the BTC addresss and email:
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/07/sextortion-scam-uses-recipients-hacked-passwords/

Here you see that the scammer consolidated the 11 successful frauds on the 1GYN.. address into address 1JsACYBoRCYkz7DSgyKurMyibbmHwcHbPd which received more than 4000 BTC in thousands of previous transactions. Thescammer used many different addresses.
https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/9d7208192348171c9beb1bede3b7f610ab1811c464fb9cb57891a9f4ad647a9e

[nebuch]

I think the Police worldwide are not really super advance to track the slander. Wallet address can simply be track once the owner is just like us a simple person. But it the owner is knowledgeable in crypto and know deeper than the Police. They cannot track and couldn't give justice to the victim. I hope one day there will have full protection not just for them but also for us who experienced hundreds of scams.