US charges two Canadian fraudsters over $230k Bitcoin theft

Hackers are using advanced malware dubbed 'CookieMiner'

Two Canadian citizens have been charged in the United States over the theft of 23.2 Bitcoin ($230,000) from an American woman.

According to Indian publication The Week, the two fraudsters set up a Twitter handle named @HitBTCAssist with the aim of scamming victims who required customer service support.

Karanjit Singh Khatkar, 23, and Jagroop Singh Khatkar, 24, convinced the victim to share her login details to HitBTC and Kraken.

The duo then siphoned out a quarter of a million dollars worth of Bitcoin before dividing it between their own personal wallets.

They are both being charged with a number of crimes ranging from one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering, five counts of wire fraud, three counts of aggravated identity theft, and multiple counts of money laundering.

Karanjit was arrested last month at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, however Jagroop remains on the run with his whereabouts currently unknown.

This case is the latest in a long line of cryptocurrency scams to hit social media, with the Ethereum giveaway bots coming back in full force this year in light of Bitcoin’s rally from $3,150 to $14,000.

Scammers target high-profile Twitter accounts and leave comments claiming to have won cryptocurrency after depositing Ethereum to a random address. Twitter has attempted to ban all accounts posting these giveaways, but some still remain.

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Oliver Knight

Londoner ‘Ollie’ graduated from Birmingham City University with a journalism degree in 2016. He combines his writing with his love of crypto and blockchain here at Coin Rivet, saying “It disrupts well-established institutions (banks) while giving an avenue to the less fortunate to achieve financial freedom.” Like all true Londoners, his pet hate is… “People standing on the left-hand side of the escalators on the Tube!”.