Bitfinex Accused of $850 Million Fraud

In the evolving story of a so-called "stablecoin" the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James accused iFinex Inc. -- operator of the Bitfinex exchange and the Tether cryptocurrency -- of trying to cover up "the apparent loss of $850 million dollars of co-mingled client and corporate funds." While researchers have tied Tether transactions to the spike in Bitcoin value that occurred between March 2017 and March 2018, this issue of the missing money is allegedly tied to a transfer of $850 million in funds to Crypto Capital Corp., a payment processor based in Panama.

The AG says Bitfinex lost access to funds it had transferred there after regular banks stopped handling its business and subsequently dipped into $900 million of Tether's cash reserves. According to the filing, Crypto Capital Corp. told Bitfinex the funds were "seized by governmental authorities in Portugal, Poland, and the United States" but the AG says Bitfinex doesn't believe that is true.

link.

Craig Steven Wright Does NOT Have a PhD, a Supercomputer and Probably is NOT Satoshi Nakamoto

When WIRED named Craig Wright Tuesday as the most likely suspect to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of bitcoin, we laid out two possibilities that outweighed any others: “Either Wright invented bitcoin, or he’s a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did.” Three days later, new clues point to that second, strange scenario.

link.

2nd link.

Report: MtGox CEO Arrested in Japan

Japanese police on Saturday arrested Mark Karpeles, CEO of the collapsed MtGox bitcoin exchange, over the loss of nearly $390 million worth of the virtual currency, local media said.

Karpeles, 30, is suspected of having accessed the computer system of the exchange and falsifying data on its outstanding balance, Kyodo News and public broadcaster NHK said.

The global virtual currency community was shaken by the shuttering of MtGox, which froze withdrawals in February 2014 because of what the firm said was a bug in the software underpinning Bitcoin that allowed hackers to pilfer them.

The exchange filed for bankruptcy protection soon after, admitting it had lost 850,000 coins worth 48 billion yen ($387 million) at the time.

link.

Well, Crap. The Goblins-Kickstarter Scam & Resulting Conflict

It seems someone started a kickstarter campaign in the name of the Goblins webcomic.  The person was NOT affiliated with author of the webcomic and ended up bilking the backers out of  lot of money.  The author warned kickstarter, which ignored him and then later told the author to talk to the person running the KS.  Then apparently later on, KS posted the author's home address.

At this point, as much as I despise lawyers, its time for the author to invoke them.

Not just make posts to the internet.

First Academic Study on Bitcoin Scams Reveals Minimum $11 Million Worth of Fraud Over Past Four Years

Fraudulent schemes have scammed at least $11 million in Bitcoin deposits from unsuspecting cyber customers over the past four years, according to new cyber security research from Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

Bitcoin is the digital world's most popular virtual currency, with millions in circulation.

In the first empirical study of its kind, SMU researchers found that hucksters used four different types of schemes through authentic-looking web-based investment and banking outlets to lure customers and heist deposits, said computer security expert Marie Vasek, lead researcher on the study.

"Our calculation of $11 million is almost certainly at the low-end," said Vasek. "The amount of Bitcoin that depositors have lost to these scams is probably many millions more."

Typically the scams succeed by exploiting not only people's greed, but also the urge to "get rich quick," coupled with the inability to judge the legitimacy of web services to decide which financial sites are good or bad, said Bitcoin and cyber security expert Tyler W. Moore, co-researcher on the study.

"Because the complete history of Bitcoin transactions are made public, we have been able to inspect, for the first time, the money flowing in and out of fraudulent schemes in great detail. It's like having access to all of Bernie Madoff's books for many of these scams," said Moore, director of the Economics and Social Sciences program of the Darwin Deason Institute for Cyber Security in SMU's Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering.

link.