Thai cyber police recover 14 million baht in crypto from foreign hacker
Six Thai victims set to reclaim losses as investigation continues
Officers from the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau (CCIB) of Thailand seized cryptocurrency worth 14 million baht from a foreign hacker and plan to return the funds to six Thai victims.
Yesterday, November 12, CCIB officers held a press conference to report their successful crackdown on the foreign hacker under the name Operation 293. The investigation began after Thai victims filed complaints about malware attacks.
Police said the victims had unknowingly downloaded malware or a trojan programme, believed to have been triggered by clicking links on investment-related websites.
Once installed, the malicious software searched for passwords stored in Google Authenticator keys along with seed phrases or seed words, which act as the master key to a cryptocurrency wallet, allowing the hacker to gain full control of the victims’ trading accounts.
The suspect then converted all of the victims’ cryptocurrencies into USDT, except for Bitcoin (BTC), before transferring the assets into his own digital wallets in both USDT and BTC. In the first case alone, the losses amounted to 93,344.83 USDT and 2.51 BTC.
The CCIB investigation later identified the hacker as an Eastern European national. Cyber police coordinated with relevant private companies to temporarily freeze the suspect’s digital wallets.
Further investigation uncovered six additional Thai victims, with losses reaching 432,000 USDT, equivalent to more than 14 million baht.
Police then worked with Bitkub’s technical team to successfully transfer all 432,000 USDT into a police wallet for safekeeping.
Operation 293 is being hailed as a major success, highlighting the importance of cooperation between public and private sectors, both domestic and international, in tackling transnational cybercrime.
The stolen cryptocurrency will be returned to six Thai victims. According to a report on Channel 7, around 12 million baht worth of crypto has already been returned to two victims.
Officers said they would expand the investigation and prepare charges against the foreign suspect for transnational cyber offences.
Latest Thailand News
Follow The Thaiger on Google News:
