British Man Arrested For Stealing 10 Million Euros Worth IOTA

By Rishma Banerjee

As per recently published reports, The United Kingdom (UK’s) South East Regional Organized Crime Unit (SEROCU), Europol, Hessen State Police of Germany and the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), have collaborated to arrest a 36-year old British man who has been allegedly accused of fraud, money laundering and theft crimes. The suspect was detained by SEROCU after a search conducted at an address in Oxford. Several computers and other electronic gadgets have also been clutched.

This comes after a theft of more than €10 million in IOTA digital currency from around 85 victims, all across the globe was reported. The investigation was initiated early last year when Hessen State police registered many reports from various people of money been illegally stolen from crypto wallets. Investigations revealed that the fraud had occurred from the website Iotaseed.io, specifically targeting the customers of IOTA crypto.

IOTA wallets are safeguarded by an 81-digit seed, which can be produced using online seed-generators like those on the verified IOTA website. In the websites that were advertised online included a malevolent seed-generator functioning on iotaseed.io.

Many victims formed the seed on this official website in straightness, however, the seeds were kept in the background by the service provider. The criminal then applied these to gain access to the users’ (victims’) wallets and transacted their fund to other crypto wallets registered with phony IDs.

It was in July, last year, that the German authorities identified a potential suspect. The criminal case was then transferred to the jurisdiction of the Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT), in coordination with the international cooperation between the various major EU Member States engaged.

An operational meeting which turned out to be of monumental importance with regards of sharing information and evidence between British investigators, German and Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, was also later carried out later, at Europol’s headquarters. A video was posted on the official Europol website, which shows some substances and cash discovered by the investigators at the address of the accused. All these were confiscated and then taken for further examination.

Rishma Banerjee

Rishma is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and has a special place in her life for sifting through all sorts of random trivia, thank you very much.

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