Despite the fact that Cryptocurrency isn’t a centralized means of payment, law enforcement agencies are doing their best to keep the financial world sanitized. An operational investigation, by a joint force between South Korean capital city cybercrimes police and the FBI, has exposed a phishing scam where $800,000 worth of XRP was carted away.
The scam which was majorly centered on victims in South Korea and Japan found two culprit in relation to the event. According to a local report from the country, a computer programmer and another culprit linked with the case have been arrested.
According to the report, the other culprit who engineered the scam employed the programmer, 42, and the latter designed a replica of a Ripple exchange website where users were asked to submit their logging details, and this was used to cart away their wealth on the real exchange.
He also connived with a crypto exchange operator based in Japan for user’s information like email accounts and affiliated exchanges to identify potential targets.
The report revealed that 37 Japanese and 24 Korean investors were the victims involved in the case.
According to the investigation, the employer who masterminded the phishing scam converted the pilfered XRP into Korean fiat currency. The scammer then used the converted fund to acquire a five-star accommodation as well as some other luxury items.
The brain behind the scam supposedly claimed he did it after all his wealth were also carted away in 2014 in an exchange hack, and the hacker got away with the fund without facing any penalty.
While the Korean police cannot lawfully seize the culprit’s assets because cryptocurrency has not been legalized under the South Korean law, the perpetrator claimed he had spent all the fund, and therefore, the victims would likely not get reimbursed.
