$27M In Bitcoin Stolen By Impersonating Famous Cryptocurrency Exchange

Polices in the Netherlands and the UK have arrested 6 people for stealing €24 million (roughly Rs. 2,284 million) worth of cryptocurrency.

As per a statement, these criminals robbed Bitcoin from more than 4,000 people in 12 countries. However, it is believed that more people have been got affected and the number of victims will still be on the rise. The police agencies have cooperated to carry out an investigation for 14 months until they arrested 6 people, including a woman and five men at their houses in Amsterdam Rotterdam, and Southern England as well.

In addition, according to Europol’s statement, these subjects were running a site which impersonated a famous online exchange of cryptocurrency. However, the law enforcement agency (LEA) has not revealed which exchange. The group is believed to have used “typosquatting”, which is a technique using misspelled URLs in order to deceive victims into the thought that they are actually on the site that they want to access when they actually are not there, in fact.

The site impersonates the real site so that when a user tries to connect to the site,  it will forward the sensitive details of the user to bad actors. And then the details can be used to steal from Bitcoin wallets as well as exchange accounts.

Meanwhile, another scam of cryptocurrency has recently taken advantage of the same technique to run a fake site for selling the token. Cyber-baddies copied Facebook’s Calibra site with a small change to the “i” in URL. Instead of Calibra.com, the criminals use Calìbra.com in order to deceive users into the thought that they are actually on the genuine site.