Isreali Man Indicted for $1.75 Million Crypto Theft

Every technological advancement has both its downsides and upsides and this is no different with blockchain technology and cryptocurrency in particular. While crypto has united the global business world and has created an alternative from the traditional financial system and is considered the currency of the future, it is unfortunately subjectable to hacks and theft which is an ongoing issue that has affected everyone from individual crypto holders to the biggest exchanges in the world that have been attacked by malicious parties.

One of the most recent examples is an Israeli hacker from Tel Aviv who has been reported to have stolen $1.75 million in form of crypto from various foreign citizens as reported on July 18, 2019.

Caught in the Act

The criminal question is Eliyahu Gigi from Tel Aviv and he is being charged with several offenses such as the fraud, theft, aggravated countering, use of a forged document, perjury money-laundering, and others. The victims of a scam include Belgians, Dutch and German citizens, and the stolen cryptocurrencies are of a wide variety such as bitcoin, ethereum, and dash.

According to official court documents, until June 2019, Gigi had founded and managed a criminal syndicate that made use of various websites that are considered infrastructure for criminal offenses and gaining profit for himself.  This money was stolen by Giji through the distribution of various software through various websites that hacked into their victims’ computers and stole their various digital currencies.

He was able to hide his criminal enterprise by using remote servers and also concealing with digital currencies. He made use of various applications that concealed the digital trail that led to the source of the digital currencies and also moved them between various wallets and split the currency as well as converted them into other currencies to avoid detection. In terms of tax, he concealed his income from 2012 to 2013 and omitted income that he received in 2015 and 2016.

The police were eventually alerted and an investigation was carried out by the cyber unit of the Israeli police lahav 433 squad in conjunction with the Israel tax authority Yahalom unit. Giji, along with his brother, was arrested in June 2019 when it was discovered that they had stolen $100 million from digital accounts and held them through an international fishing fraud. An indictment was filed only against Giji and then the amount stolen was scaled down to $1.75 million.