Cryptocurrency and crime

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Cryptocurrency and crime describe notable examples of cybercrime related to theft (or the otherwise illegal acquisition) of cryptocurrencies and some methods or security vulnerabilities commonly exploited. Cryptojacking is a form of cybercrime specific to cryptocurrencies used on websites to hijack a victim's resources and use them for hashing and mining cryptocurrency. [1]

Contents

According to blockchain analysis company Chainalysis, around US$2.5 billion was laundered through Bitcoin between 2009 and 2018, and the fraction of cryptocurrency transactions linked to illicit activities has been on the rise since early 2019. [2] In 2021, 0.15% of known cryptocurrency transactions conducted were involved in illicit activities like cybercrime, money laundering and terrorism financing, representing a total of $14 billion. [3] The FBI estimated that crypto fraud costs American investors $4.8 billion in 2023. [4]

Background

There are various types of cryptocurrency wallets available, with different layers of security, including devices, software for different operating systems or browsers, and offline wallets.

Novel exploits unique to blockchain transactions exist, and aim to generate unintended outcomes for those involved. One of the more well-known issues that open the possibility for exploits on Bitcoin is the transaction malleability problem. [5]

The Immunefi Crypto Losses 2022 Report lists industry losses from frauds and hacking as a combined total of US$3.9 billion for the year, and US$8 billion for 2021. [6]

Despite increasingly strict regulations in the US and Europe, Crypto Crime continues to rise, with losses in early 2025 already exceeding $502 million, according to Bitrace’s Crypto Crime Report 2025. Hacks account for 63% of these losses, with phishing and rug pulls also contributing significantly, particularly on decentralized exchanges like Uniswap and Tornado Cash. Criminals are using ever more sophisticated methods, including smart contract attacks and deepfake scams. While some crypto exchanges are strengthening compliance and transparency, such as Coinbase and PayPal’s collaboration on stablecoins, others still overlook suspicious transactions. New regulations are pushing companies to tighten Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) procedures, but criminals keep exploiting loopholes. For investors, vigilance remains crucial. Thorough research, secure wallets, and skepticism toward offers that seem too good to be true are essential as crypto crime becomes increasingly professionalized. [7]

Notable thefts

In 2018, around US$1.7 billion in cryptocurrency was lost to scams, theft and fraud. In the first quarter of 2019, such losses rose to US$1.2 billion. [8] 2022 was a record year for cryptocurrency theft, according to Chainalysis, with US$3.8 billion [9] stolen worldwide during 125 system hacks, [10] including US$1.7 billion stolen by "North Korea-linked hackers". [9]

Exchanges

Notable cryptocurrency exchange compromises resulting in the loss of cryptocurrencies include:

Wallets

The Parity Wallet has had two security incidents amounting to 666,773 ETH lost or stolen. [41] In July 2017, due to a bug in the multi-signature code, 153,037 ETH (approximately US$32 million at the time) were stolen. [42] [43] In November 2017, a subsequent multisignature[ clarification needed ] flaw in Parity made 513,774 ETH (about US$150 million) unreachable; [44] [45] as of March 2019, the funds were still frozen. [46]

Energy

Notable cases of electricity theft to mine proof-of-work cryptocurrencies include:

Blockchains

Bitcoin

There have been many cases of bitcoin theft. [51] As of December 2017, around 980,000 bitcoins—over five percent of all bitcoin in circulation [a] —had been lost on cryptocurrency exchanges. [52]

One type of theft involves a third party accessing the private key to a victim's bitcoin address, [53] or an online wallet. [54] If the private key is stolen, all the bitcoins from the compromised address can be transferred. In that case, the network does not have any provisions to identify the thief, block further transactions of those stolen bitcoins, or return them to the legitimate owner. [55]

Theft also occurs at sites where bitcoins are used to purchase illicit goods. In late November 2013, an estimated US$100 million in bitcoins were allegedly stolen from the online illicit goods marketplace Sheep Marketplace, which immediately closed. [56] Users tracked the coins as they were processed and converted to cash, but no funds were recovered and no culprits were identified. [56] A different black market, Silk Road 2, stated that during a February 2014 hack, bitcoins valued at $2.7 million were taken from escrow accounts. [57]

Sites where users exchange bitcoins for cash or store them in "wallets" are also targets for theft. Inputs.io, an Australian wallet service, was hacked twice in October 2013 and lost more than $1 million in bitcoins. [58] GBL, a Chinese bitcoin trading platform, suddenly shut down on 26 October 2013; subscribers, unable to log in, lost up to $5 million worth of bitcoin. [59] In late February 2014 Mt. Gox, one of the largest virtual currency exchanges, filed for bankruptcy in Tokyo amid reports that bitcoins worth US$350 million had been stolen. [60] Flexcoin, a bitcoin storage specialist based in Alberta, Canada, shut down in March 2014 after saying it discovered a theft of about $650,000 in bitcoins. [61] Poloniex, a digital currency exchange, reported in March 2014 that it lost bitcoins valued at around $50,000. [62] In January 2015 UK-based bitstamp, the third busiest bitcoin exchange globally was hacked and US$5 million in bitcoins were stolen. [63] In February 2015, a Chinese exchange named BTER lost bitcoins worth nearly $2 million to hackers. [64]

A major bitcoin exchange, Bitfinex, was compromised by the 2016 Bitfinex hack, when nearly 120,000 bitcoins (around US$71 million) were stolen in 2016. [65] Bitfinex was forced to suspend its trading. The theft was the second-largest bitcoin heist ever, dwarfed only by the Mt. Gox theft in 2014. According to Forbes , "All of Bitfinex's customers... will stand to lose money. The company has announced a cut of 36.067% across the board." [66] Following the hack the company failed to refund customers, though efforts are continuing. [67] In 2022, the US government recovered 94,636 bitcoin (worth approximately $3.6 billion at the time of recovery) from the 2016 thefts of the Bitfinex exchange, reported as the "largest financial seizure" in U.S. history. [68] By February 2022, the amount of bitcoin stolen in 2016 had increased in value to $4.5 billion. Two people were arrested for the thefts [69] in 2022; married couple Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein and rapper Heather "Razzlekhan" Morgan were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States. [68]

On May 7, 2019, hackers stole over 7000 Bitcoins from the Binance Cryptocurrency Exchange, at a value of over 40 million US dollars. Binance CEO Zhao Changpeng stated: "The hackers used a variety of techniques, including phishing, viruses, and other attacks... The hackers had the patience to wait, and execute well-orchestrated actions through multiple seemingly independent accounts at the most opportune time." [70]

Thefts have raised safety concerns. Charles Hayter, founder of the digital currency comparison website CryptoCompare said, "It's a reminder of the fragility of the infrastructure in such a nascent industry." [71] According to the hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Small Business on April 2, 2014, "these vendors lack regulatory oversight, minimum capital standards and don't provide consumer protection against loss or theft." [72]

Japan and the United States have accused North Korean hackers of stealing cryptocurrency worth over $300 million from the Japan-based exchange DMM Bitcoin. The theft was attributed to the TraderTraitor group, believed to be part of the Lazarus Group, which is allegedly linked to North Korean authorities. The incident occurred in late May 2024, involving the theft of 4,502.9 Bitcoin. The theft involved the hackers using social engineering tactics to impersonate a recruiter on LinkedIn and send a malicious pre-employment test to an employee at a crypto wallet software company. This allowed them to compromise the employee's system and manipulate a legitimate transaction request from DMM, resulting in the loss of 4,502.9 Bitcoin. The FBI and Japan's National Police Agency are collaborating to combat North Korea's cybercrime activities, which date back to the mid-1990s and include a cyber-warfare unit known as Bureau 121. The Lazarus Group has previously gained notoriety for its involvement in high-profile hacks, including the attack on Sony Pictures in retaliation for the film "The Interview."

Ethereum

In June 2016, hackers exploited a vulnerability in The DAO to steal US$50 million. Subsequently, the currency was forked into Ethereum Classic, and Ethereum, with the latter continuing with the new blockchain without the exploited translations. [73] [74]

On November 21, 2017, Tether announced that it had been hacked, losing $31 million in USDT from its core treasury wallet. [75] The company has 'tagged' the stolen currency, hoping to 'lock' them in the hacker's wallet (making them unspendable).[ citation needed ]

In 2022, hackers created a signature account on a blockchain bridge called "Wormhole" and stole more than $300 million worth of ether. [76]

Fraud

Exit scams and Ponzi schemes through initial coin offerings (ICOs)

Most exit scams (or rugpulls) as well as many ponzi schemes involving cryptocurrencies are performed through Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). [77] As an example, according to a report by Satis Group, almost 80% of all projects launched through an ICO in 2017 were scams. [78] These scams usually involve attracting investments from mostly retail investors, inflating the price and the perpetrators subsequently abandoning the project in question after selling off their own shares. [79]

The novelty of ICOs accounts for the current lack of governmental regulation. [80] This lack of regulatory measures as well as the pseudonymity of cryptocurrency transactions and their international nature across countless jurisdictions in many different countries can make it much more difficult to identify and take legal action against perpetrators involved in these scams. [81] [82] Since 2017 the SEC has been actively pursuing groups and individuals responsible for ICO-related scams. [83]

  • AriseCoin (AriseBank): AriseBank marketed itself as the world's first decentralized bank, falsely claiming to be able to offer FDIC-insured accounts, VISA cards as well as services related to cryptocurrency and making other false statements. [84] AriseBank promoted its AriseCoin through celebrity endorsement and social media in order to raise the US$ 1 billion the company was aiming for. [85] Their ICO was halted by the SEC in early 2018 with their CEO and COO receiving a fine of US$ 2.7 million. [86]
  • BitConnect: Bitconnect was among the highest-performing cryptocurrencies in 2017, promising investors enormous returns through a trading bot. [87] At its height, it reached a market capitalization of US$ 3.4 billion. [88] In early 2018 the exchanged ceased to operate with investors losing millions of dollars, amounting to a total of US$ 14.5 million. [89] It later turned out that the initial profits were generated through a Ponzi scheme by paying earlier customers with money made through newer customers. [90] Legal action against the perpetrators was taken on an international scale. [91]
  • Centra: Centra was a Miami-based company that claimed to offer a cryptocurrency-based debit card backed by a VISA and Mastercard. The company raised US$ 32 million by October 2017 through an ICO and, f few months later, performed an exit scam. In April 2018 two of the founders were arrested. It was soon revealed that neither Mastercard nor VISA backed the company in their alleged efforts. [89]
  • Modern Tech (PinCoin/iFan): Based in Vietnam, Modern Tech hosted two separate ICOs for PinCoin as well as iFan promising monthly returns of 48%. [89] After the initial success, the founders ran off with approximately US$ 660 million raised from 32,000 investors. [92] The founders are still at large and none of the funds have been retrieved. [93]
  • PlexCoin: After Dominic Lacroix and Sabrina Paradis-Rogers (the founders of PlexCoin) had officially raised around US$ 15 million through a fraudulent ICO in August 2017 while promising a return of 1,354 % within a month, the SEC filed a civil complaint in December of the same year against them and sought an injunction to cease those sales, freeze the assets involved, pay civil penalties and prohibit the ones responsible behind the token launch from participating in any future offerings of cryptocurrency. [94] Shortly after Lacroix was sentenced to two months in prison and fined CA$ 110,000 by the Quebec Superior Court. [95] The SEC's proceedings led to seven-figure fines for the defendants in 2019 and a retrieval of the investors' funds. [96] During the proceedings, the SEC was able to prove that the success of the ICO was inflated by the founders who in fact had raised US$ 8.5 million instead of the US$ 15 million they had announced. [97]

Ponzi schemes

Ponzi schemes are another common form of utilizing blockchain-based technologies to commit fraud. Most schemes of this sort use multi-level marketing schemes to encourage investors to conduct risky investments. [98] Onecoin is one of the more notable examples of cryptocurrency-ponzi schemes: Founded in 2014 by Ruja Ignatova, OneCoin is estimated to have generated US$ 4 billion in income. [87] While at least in China some of the investors' funds have been recovered and several members of the organisation arrested in the U.S., Ignatova herself is still at large. [99]

Money laundering

Due to the inability of third parties to de-pseudonymize crypto transactions criminal entities have often resorted to using cryptocurrency to conduct money laundering. [100] Especially ICOs lacking KYC guidelines and anti-money laundering procedures are often used to launder illicit funds due to the pseudonymity they offer. [85] By using ICOs criminals launder these funds by buying tokens off of legitimate investors and selling them. This issue is intensified by the lack of measures against money laundering implemented by centralized cryptocurrency exchanges. [85]

A well-known early example of money laundering using cryptocurrencies is Silk Road. Shut down in 2013 with its founder Ross Ulbricht indicted for among other counts a money laundering conspiracy, the website was used for several illicit activities including money laundering solely using Bitcoin as a form of payment. [101]

Apart from traditional cryptocurrencies, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are also commonly used in connection with money laundering activities. [102] NFTs are often used to perform Wash Trading by creating several different wallets for one individual, generating several fictitious sales and consequently selling the respective NFT to a third party. [103] According to a report by Chainalysis, these types of wash trades are becoming increasingly popular among money launderers especially due to the largely anonymous nature of transactions on NFT marketplaces. [104] [105] Auction platforms for NFT sales may face regulatory pressure to comply with anti-money laundering legislation. [106]

Regulatory measures

Canada is generally regarded as the first state actor implementing regulatory measures dealing with money laundering conducted by the usage of cryptocurrencies. [107] By 2013 the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) — in direct reference to the centralized exchange Mt. Gox — issued regulations making it clear that all crypto-to-fiat exchangers had to apply KYC- as well as anti-money laundering methods. [108] Any suspicious transactions have therefore to be reported to the authorities. [109] Centralized exchanges have to register as money transmitters, with the exact definition of who and what constitutes a money transmitter in the crypto sphere being somewhat blurred and regulations differing between the different states of the U.S. [110] An important exemption from these regulations is decentralized exchanges due to the fact that they do not hold any fiat currency. [111]

As part of the Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive of 2018 and in an effort to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism, the European Union has issued a directive making all member-states have to make sure that crypto exchanges are licensed and registered. [112] The EU is furthermore planning to take measures to ensure that all customers of cryptocurrency exchanges are to verify their identity as part of the registration process. [113]

Regarding NFTs

Auction platforms for NFT sales may face regulatory pressure to comply with anti-money laundering legislation. A February 2022 study from the United States Treasury assessed that there was "some evidence of money laundering risk in the high-value art market," including through "the emerging digital art market, such as the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs)." [114] The study considered how NFT transactions may be a simpler option for laundering money through art by avoiding transportation or insurance complications in trading physical art. Several NFT exchanges were labeled as virtual asset service providers that may be subject to Financial Crimes Enforcement Network regulations. [115]

The European Union has yet to establish specific regulations to combat money laundering through NFTs. The European Commission announced in July 2022 that it is planning to draw regulations regarding that issue by 2024. [116] [113]

Giveaway scam

A cryptocurrency giveaway scam involves scammers compromising or impersonating celebrities, influencers, or well-known companies to falsely claim they are multiplying cryptocurrency or giving away free cryptocurrency via airdrop. A variety of methods are used to promote these scams, primarily through posts and livestreams on social media.

YouTube is a platform commonly used to promote this scam. Popular accounts are hacked to stream pre-recorded videos of the impersonated figure, overlaid with fake giveaway announcements that often encourage viewers to visit the scammer’s website. [117] In July 2020, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and 17 other victims filed a lawsuit against YouTube and its parent company, Google, alleging that the platform allowed scammers to use their name, image and likeness in cryptocurrency giveaway scams. [118] After earlier dismissals based on Section 230, a 2024 California Court of Appeal ruling allowed the case to proceed, finding that YouTube’s role may fall outside those legal protections, with the case now pending further proceedings in the lower court. [119]

In the 2020 Twitter account hijacking, 130 high-profile accounts, including those of multi-billionaire Elon Musk and then U.S. president Joe Biden, were used to promote a bitcoin giveaway scam. Within minutes of the initial tweets, more than 320 transactions had been sent to one of the wallet addresses, and over US$110,000 worth of bitcoin had been deposited before the scam messages were removed by Twitter. [120] Coinbase blacklisted the bitcoin address and said they stopped over 1,000 transactions totaling over US$280,000 from being sent. [121]

Paper wallet generators

Paper wallet generators allow users to create a wallet address and corresponding private key. While not dubious in itself, fraudsters create infected generators that secretly phishes the generated keys, giving them control of the wallet. [122]

In August 2017, a hacker began advertising an online IOTA wallet seed generator. To gain the victims trust, the hacker linked to a legitimate GitHub repository, claiming the website ran the same code. In reality, malicious code in a hidden Notifier.js file patched the Math.seedrandom function, forcing the generator to use a fixed seed plus a counter variable that increased by one each time seedrandom was called. This caused Math.random() to return a predictable sequence of numbers, resulting in the same IOTA wallet seeds being generated. Each of these seeds was logged. [123] On January 19, 2018, the hacker drained approximately US$3.94 million from wallets created during the six-month period. Profiles associated with the website on GitHub, Reddit, and Quora that had provided support to users were deleted, and the website was updated to display the message: “Taken down. Apologies.” [124] In January 2019, Europol arrested a 36-year-old man from Oxford, England believed to be behind the theft. [125]

Pig butchering

  1. As of supply count of Bitcoin, 2021-09-23

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Cryptocurrency and crime
Simplified Chinese 杀猪盘
Traditional Chinese 殺豬盤
Literal meaningKilling pig game [126]
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin Shā zhū pán