UK Government Wants to Keep $7 Billion in Stolen Bitcoin It Has Seized


The U.K. Government is seeking to keep most of the $7 billion in Bitcoin it seized in connection with a Chinese investment fraud, following the conviction of the fraud’s alleged organizer this week.

Zhimin Qian pleaded guilty on counts of possessing and transferring criminal property at Southwark Crown Court on Monday, following last year’s conviction of her assistant Seng Hok Ling (also known as Jian Wen) on similar counts. This conviction now raises the question of who will keep the 61,000 BTC originally seized by UK authorities in 2018, with upwards of 120,000 victims in China seeking compensation for their losses.

Read more…
Source: Decrypt News


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • Major Airport Malware Attack Shines a Light on OT Security

    October 18, 2019

    A cryptomining infection managed to spread to half of all workstations at a major international airport in Europe – shining a spotlight on security for operational tech and IT convergence. Researchers at Cyberbit found the XMRig Monero mining malware, which was a known strain called “Playerz,” but which skated by antivirus solutions on the endpoints by adding a ...

  • Phorpiex Botnet Shifts Gears From Ransomware to Sextortion

    October 17, 2019

    A  recent wide-scale campaign indicates that a decade-old botnet is shifting gears from distributing ransomware to delivering millions of sextortion threats to innocent recipients. Worse, researchers say that the botnet’s spam campaign can affect up to 27 million potential victims. The botnet, Phorpiex, has been active for almost a decade and currently controls almost 500,000 computers globally. The ...

  • Graboid: First-Ever Cryptojacking Worm Found in Images on Docker Hub

    October 16, 2019

    Unit 42 researchers identified a new cryptojacking worm we’ve named Graboid that’s spread to more than 2,000 unsecured Docker hosts. We derived the name by paying homage to the 1990’s movie “Tremors,” since this worm behaves similarly to the sandworms in the movie, in that it moves in short bursts of speed, but overall is ...

  • Cybercrime Tool Prices Bump Up in Dark Web Markets

    October 16, 2019

    Prices have been rising in the last two years for longstanding tools available on the Dark Web to help bad actors commit cyber attacks and fraud, alongside newer innovations that are emerging to bolster crimes like ransomware and SIM swapping, new research has found. Keeping track of these trends in dark-web markets for the tools and ...

  • Blackremote: Money Money Money – A Swedish Actor Peddles an Expensive New RAT

    October 15, 2019

    While researching prevalent commodity Remote Access Tools (RATs), Unit 42 researchers discovered a new, undocumented RAT in September, which had almost 50 samples observed in more than 2,200 attack sessions within the first month it was sold. In this report, we document the RAT manager/builder, client malware, and profile the Swedish actor behind this together ...

  • Fin7 Cybergang Retools With New Malicious Code

    October 11, 2019

    The Fin7 cybercrime group has ramped up its offensive capabilities by adding new malicious code to its malware arsenal. Researchers said that this is evidence that Fin7 is still a growing threat despite the arrest of several Fin7 members in 2018. The notorious group has adopted a new dropper sample called Boostwrite, which uses new detection evasion ...