Altcoins Talks - Cryptocurrency Forum
Learning & News => News related to Crypto => Topic started by: _act_ on September 16, 2024, 09:53:58 AM
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Crypto invasion attack is becoming common than before. As more people know about cryptocurrencies, be expecting more criminals to know about it also. We need to be very careful. See this Florida man, Remy Ra St Felix, 25, of West Palm Beach, and his co-conspirators sentenced to 47 years in prison for home invasion robberies and sim swapping attacks.
A Florida man was sentenced to 47 years in prison on Wednesday for his role in a scheme involving a series of home invasion robberies targeting cryptocurrency. Between Sept. 5 and Sept. 12, a total of 12 men have been sentenced for their role in the scheme.
According to court documents and evidence presented at the trial, Remy Ra St Felix, 25, of West Palm Beach, and his co-conspirators stole over $3.5 million from victims through SIM swapping and violent home invasions in which they held victims at gunpoint, assaulted them, and bound them with plastic cable ties. St Felix was convicted on June 25 by a federal jury in Greensboro, North Carolina, after a six-day trial. In addition to his sentence of incarceration, St Felix was sentenced to five years of supervised release and ordered to pay $524,153.39 in restitution.
We need privacy and anonymity than before.
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Crypto invasion attack is becoming common than before. As more people know about cryptocurrencies, be expecting more criminals to know about it also. We need to be very careful. See this Florida man, Remy Ra St Felix, 25, of West Palm Beach, and his co-conspirators sentenced to 47 years in prison for home invasion robberies and sim swapping attacks.
A Florida man was sentenced to 47 years in prison on Wednesday for his role in a scheme involving a series of home invasion robberies targeting cryptocurrency. Between Sept. 5 and Sept. 12, a total of 12 men have been sentenced for their role in the scheme.
According to court documents and evidence presented at the trial, Remy Ra St Felix, 25, of West Palm Beach, and his co-conspirators stole over $3.5 million from victims through SIM swapping and violent home invasions in which they held victims at gunpoint, assaulted them, and bound them with plastic cable ties. St Felix was convicted on June 25 by a federal jury in Greensboro, North Carolina, after a six-day trial. In addition to his sentence of incarceration, St Felix was sentenced to five years of supervised release and ordered to pay $524,153.39 in restitution.
We need privacy and anonymity than before.
Yes you have well spoken. The more the increase on adoptions, the more the increase on many form of criminal activities on the crypto space.
As time goes on, there shall surely be further crimes of various form because, as a matter of facts, this is the beginning of the cryptocurrency movements, we are going to the moon very soon. The market is currently loading for a massive bill run that will shakes everywhere, and with this near future crypto market pumps, crypto theft may rise to an 'all time high' that never had been before.
In addition, privacy coins are better answers to some of these criminals activities, unfortunately many government of the world hated privacy coins, claiming them to be security and clamping down on them by regulators.
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It's good to see they're jailed for long time and pay restitution, but it's not clear whether the amount fully cover victim financial and emotional loss.
In addition, privacy coins are better answers to some of these criminals activities, unfortunately many government of the world hated privacy coins, claiming them to be security and clamping down on them by regulators.
It doesn't help when people use centralized exchange to store their coin, just like few victims stated on the full news.
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Justice has been served here, but obviously, if we have to look at previous crimes that involved crypto, there could be worst but they got light sentence and usually it is just 20 years in prison as compare here wherein the judge decision is 47 years.
SBF who took billions just sentence for 25 years in prison if I'm not mistaken, with 3 years supervised released.
Anyhow, as we have seen, still justice for the victims and those who perpetuated this crimes is going to have a lot of thinking to do in jail.
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What is the role of SIM swapping in such attacks? I thought that criminals monitor the individual's activity on social media or ask about him and after knowing that he has Bitcoin, his house is broken into.
Privacy is an ongoing process and is not limited to using mixers, Tor, but learning to be silent, sharing your details with a specific group, and not buying clothes or things related to cryptocurrencies or a hardware wallet from a public store, especially if the neighborhood you live in is dangerous.
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What is the role of SIM swapping in such attacks? I thought that criminals monitor the individual's activity on social media or ask about him and after knowing that he has Bitcoin, his house is broken into.
If I'm reading the news correctly, it's not related to his home invasion activities. They either stole money by sim swapping or put the victim at gunpoint. Looks like they have access to the victim's emails to see whether they own crypto or not. It doesn't look like the victims actively share their crypto activity on social media but use an exchange or other services that expose the victim's emails/identity details. Looks like avoiding centralized service is a must to avoid this. CMIIW.
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Good punishment, you don't break into people's homes, bind and torture them until they send you their coins, i hope more of these criminals will be caught and sentenced to a longer time in prison for their inhumane actions to innocent victims and their family. It goes without saying that $5 wrench attacks are now becoming very popular, so as crypto users we have to be vigilant to ensure we don't become a victim.
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Looks like they have access to the victim's emails to see whether they own crypto or not. It doesn't look like the victims actively share their crypto activity on social media but use an exchange or other services that expose the victim's emails/identity details.
these cases are definitely targeted and was planned for a long time finding the email of someone and figuring out if they have crypto or not is not all there is they would have to find their exact location and study the behavior of their victims are they alone? do they leave for work? etc etc. there’s a few ways to avoid this
one not sharing your emails everywhere or using a different email for crypto and other personal or professional purposes
two not using crypto platforms where it requires you to give out your name, address, and other identification details
i am glad that justice is served but these will not be the only ones to do this and we might see more of them in the future
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There is a big possibility that this kind of crime will be exploding soon in the coming years as the potential rewards can be so enticing for robbers and criminals to engage in. All they have to do is to make sure that their targets really have crypto hidden in their wallets...and since these criminals can be non-sophisticated and not so much into technology they are doing things physically. I would feel pity to someone who can be wrongly accused of having a crypto but actually don't have...that can be so horrifying to anyone to experience. Let the warning be sounded...especially for people in USA to stop telling some signs that they possess crypto because there are people who are watching them and can be planning to visit them one day in their residences endangering their lives and that of their families. And if one has really the money, maybe investing in home security system can be a good idea.
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Crypto invasion attack is becoming common than before. As more people know about cryptocurrencies, be expecting more criminals to know about it also. We need to be very careful. See this Florida man, Remy Ra St Felix, 25, of West Palm Beach, and his co-conspirators sentenced to 47 years in prison for home invasion robberies and sim swapping attacks.
A Florida man was sentenced to 47 years in prison on Wednesday for his role in a scheme involving a series of home invasion robberies targeting cryptocurrency. Between Sept. 5 and Sept. 12, a total of 12 men have been sentenced for their role in the scheme.
According to court documents and evidence presented at the trial, Remy Ra St Felix, 25, of West Palm Beach, and his co-conspirators stole over $3.5 million from victims through SIM swapping and violent home invasions in which they held victims at gunpoint, assaulted them, and bound them with plastic cable ties. St Felix was convicted on June 25 by a federal jury in Greensboro, North Carolina, after a six-day trial. In addition to his sentence of incarceration, St Felix was sentenced to five years of supervised release and ordered to pay $524,153.39 in restitution.
We need privacy and anonymity than before.
I am glad they are going after these thieves and making them pay too. This kind of justice will spread more fear among fraudsters, and the newbies coming into this field will also fear to choose this bad side of stealing people's money.
47 years in prison is a lot of years and these robbers must fear the justice system. Stealing money at gun point, especially for cryptocurrency is a real threat because it's not easy to trace them and when such bad actors try to mix this money with mixers then the image of mixers also get hurts. Not good for the overall business it is good that they are being punished.
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What is the role of SIM swapping in such attacks? I thought that criminals monitor the individual's activity on social media or ask about him and after knowing that he has Bitcoin, his house is broken into.
This part of the full news state it's another type of crime those criminal did, in order to steal crypto. I didn't find statement which says SIM swap is a part to invade victim's home.
According to court documents and evidence presented at the trial, Remy Ra St Felix, 25, of West Palm Beach, and his co-conspirators stole over $3.5 million from victims through SIM swapping and violent home invasions in which they held victims at gunpoint, assaulted them, and bound them with plastic cable ties.
Note the bold is added by me.
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it's not easy to trace them and when such bad actors try to mix this money with mixers then the image of mixers also get hurts. Not good for the overall business it is good that they are being punished.
Criminals won't stop stealing, neither will they stop finding ways to cover their tracks, irrespective of the tool they use, even when criminals defraud people in fiat currencies, they have their methods of trying to cover their tracks.
The way the government goes after BTC privacy tools, you might mistake it that only criminals use such services, but that is not the truth. They should also use some of that energy to go after the criminals themselves, rather than the tools only.
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We used to demand privacy for fear of governments, but today it seems that we need more privacy for fear of criminals. Yes, we have to maintain our privacy to hide from the eyes of governments and criminals at the same time.
Some people like to brag about their cryptocurrencies, accounts in centralized exchanges, etc., but they do not pay attention to the danger behind this public brag, as it exposes them to great risk that may not only lead to losing their money, but also their lives in some cases. Therefore, maintaining privacy is the first factor for security.
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What is the role of SIM swapping in such attacks? I thought that criminals monitor the individual's activity on social media or ask about him and after knowing that he has Bitcoin, his house is broken into.
This part of the full news state it's another type of crime those criminal did, in order to steal crypto. I didn't find statement which says SIM swap is a part to invade victim's home.
According to court documents and evidence presented at the trial, Remy Ra St Felix, 25, of West Palm Beach, and his co-conspirators stole over $3.5 million from victims through SIM swapping and violent home invasions in which they held victims at gunpoint, assaulted them, and bound them with plastic cable ties.
Note the bold is added by me.
Yes, and probably why the sentencing is huge, it's not just holding the victim at gun point, they also do SIM swapping which might be the reason why the sentencing was double by 20 years. And it's because this criminals are really very advance, just imagine they can pull off a sim swap without the victims noticing it until it was too late.
So yeah, good riddance to this criminals as they will have to suffer for the crimes that they committed.
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We need privacy and anonymity than before.
I agree these perpetrators understand how Cryptocurrency works and its potential and since a person is his own bank, they can attack these people who they know to be investors of Cryptocurrency, times are changing now, in the past our assets are tangible and stored on banks and there are so many parameters before you can withdraw it, but now these criminals only need your wallet hardware and you passphrase to steal from you.
So while we are learning about how cryptocurrency works and how we can profit, we should also learn how to secure ourselves.
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Therefore, maintaining privacy is the first factor for security.
Yeah, privacy is very important and i also recommend setting a passphrase as an extra layer of security against a $5 wrench attack, it is not certain to protect one from it, but it is better to have it than don't.
You can claim plausible deniability when you have a passphrase set, but this will probably only work on criminals who were only planning on robbing you of your fiat and valuables, before they found crypto apps in your pc, or before they saw your hardware wallet.
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Therefore, maintaining privacy is the first factor for security.
Yeah, privacy is very important and i also recommend setting a passphrase as an extra layer of security against a $5 wrench attack, it is not certain to protect one from it, but it is better to have it than don't.
You can claim plausible deniability when you have a passphrase set, but this will probably only work on criminals who were only planning on robbing you of your fiat and valuables, before they found crypto apps in your pc, or before they saw your hardware wallet.
Yes, that's right, even hard wallets like Trezor, Ledger, etc. won't protect you in such cases when a criminal attacks you and you have to open the wallet at gunpoint.
But at the same time, these hard wallets provide an additional layer of protection by creating a hidden wallet that can be very useful in such cases, as the hidden wallet is not visible to the attacker because it is hidden and protected by an additional password that no one knows except the owner of the wallet.
So it is necessary to create a hidden wallet and deposit the largest part of the assets in it while a small part of the assets remains in the main wallet to mislead the attacker.
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Tgese physical robberies of digital crypto currency is getting quite common and I am hearing about it more and more. One obvious way to prevent this would be just not saying anyone anything about how much you have. If people do not know how much you have then they will not see you as worthy of anything like this to brgin with. If its just because crypto is easy to mpve, anyone can put a ton of money on exhchange and get some bitcoin and move that too, so by that logic every rich person shouks be in danger and nor just ınes with crypto wealth. In any case I think its quite obvious that we should be protecting ourselves more than cops and law can. Most of the time just like this one, cops and law can help you after what is done is done, not beforehand, that part is something you have to do yoursekf and that can be done by not telling anyone you have any kind of wealth.
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Tgese physical robberies of digital crypto currency is getting quite common and I am hearing about it more and more. One obvious way to prevent this would be just not saying anyone anything about how much you have. If people do not know how much you have then they will not see you as worthy of anything like this to brgin with. If its just because crypto is easy to mpve, anyone can put a ton of money on exhchange and get some bitcoin and move that too, so by that logic every rich person shouks be in danger and nor just ınes with crypto wealth. In any case I think its quite obvious that we should be protecting ourselves more than cops and law can. Most of the time just like this one, cops and law can help you after what is done is done, not beforehand, that part is something you have to do yoursekf and that can be done by not telling anyone you have any kind of wealth.
That's the ironic part, way back we wanted to promote crypto and so some of us here could have been flaunting and wearing T-shirt with a Bitcoin logo (I did that way before the pandemic). Because we wanted to promote it and for people to see and maybe they become curious and then the market.
But now it's totally different, we should be very quiet and not to tell anyone about crypto or preach it in public as there are a lot of criminals that has been plowing in real life already and just waiting for someone to spill the beans and say that they have a lot of crypto in their wallet. And with that, you will be a target.
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But at the same time, these hard wallets provide an additional layer of protection by creating a hidden wallet that can be very useful in such cases, as the hidden wallet is not visible to the attacker because it is hidden and protected by an additional password that no one knows except the owner of the wallet.
I am not talking about a hardware wallet, but a passphrase, you can set up a passphrase either in a software wallet or in a hardware wallet. A passphrase is very different from a password, once you set up a passphrase, you now have a base wallet and another one that is protected by a passphrase, and to gain access to it, you must enter your passphrase.
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How will this attack be that successful?
- Are they going to force the victims to login into their wallets? What happens if the victims insist they don't have wallets and probably not into cryptocurrency?
- Maybe they came with information, having known that such persons have been advertising crypto on social media?
- This kind of robbery would only be successful in El Salvador or places where people live together in the name of bitcoin city.
Besides that, how will the robbers know which household is into crypto.
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But at the same time, these hard wallets provide an additional layer of protection by creating a hidden wallet that can be very useful in such cases, as the hidden wallet is not visible to the attacker because it is hidden and protected by an additional password that no one knows except the owner of the wallet.
I am not talking about a hardware wallet, but a passphrase, you can set up a passphrase either in a software wallet or in a hardware wallet. A passphrase is very different from a password, once you set up a passphrase, you now have a base wallet and another one that is protected by a passphrase, and to gain access to it, you must enter your passphrase.
Sorry, maybe there is a misunderstanding, but I think we are still talking about the same thing.
The passphrase you are talking about is the same hidden password-protected wallet that I talked about, but maybe I used a method that is not completely understood.
As you mentioned when you create a passphrase whether in a hardware wallet or a software wallet like Electrum, a hidden wallet is created that is protected by an additional password other than the main wallet that can be accessed without the passphrase.
See here:
Hidden Wallet
While setting up your Trezor wallet if you’ve enabled passphrase function then electrum wallet by default will ask you to enter the passphrase. Here is how to access your hidden wallet on electrum.
https://coinguides.org/passphrase-hidden-accounts-trezor-electrum/
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Criminals won't stop stealing, neither will they stop finding ways to cover their tracks, irrespective of the tool they use, even when criminals defraud people in fiat currencies, they have their methods of trying to cover their tracks.
The way the government goes after BTC privacy tools, you might mistake it that only criminals use such services, but that is not the truth. They should also use some of that energy to go after the criminals themselves, rather than the tools only.
I don't take mixers as the main tools to fraud people for criminals because if they will use such tools, the respective mixer will at some point come to an end like the previous tools came to an end. That's why I said earlier that this behavior is not good. I sometimes think we will need these tools like we will be yearning for these tools, to get anonymity as the world is adopting crypto and things will get more regulated and centralized.
The government doesn't go after privacy tools quickly only before those privacy tools which are being operated in the US while they are not given permission. There are some tools (mixers) that have stopped their service for US citizens to avoid extra fuss.
Criminals will definitely not stop and they will surely find new ways to scam people.
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How will this attack be that successful?
- Are they going to force the victims to login into their wallets? What happens if the victims insist they don't have wallets and probably not into cryptocurrency?
This attack can happen anywhere in the world, people talk about their coins a lot, some of them even post about it on their social media pages, so these attackers are usually certain that their victims have BTC. If you insist that you don't have BTC, they will torture you and your family, there is no way you wouldn't give in, so better to prevent the situation by being discreet about our crypto holdings.
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What is the role of SIM swapping in such attacks? I thought that criminals monitor the individual's activity on social media or ask about him and after knowing that he has Bitcoin, his house is broken into.
It lets you get into the victims' exchange accounts without needing to unlock their phones as they may be using fingerprints, face authentication and so on. It is not guaranteed to work all the time but many criminals and robbers try it anyway.
Anyway, if you're going to keep a lot of crypto in your house, get a gun and learn how to use it. You never know if thieves want to target you.