The US prosecutor’s office charged 12 suspects of the theft of bitcoins worth more than $ 263 million, which belonged to the creditor of the bankrupt company Genesis.

According to the US Department of Justice, most of the suspects were arrested this week in California, and two more are hidden abroad, presumably in Dubai. Accusations of the criminal group include racketeering, fraud, laundering and obstruction of justice.

The Ministry of Justice’s press release says that the main episode of theft occurred on August 18, 2024, when Malone Lam, known as Anne Hathaway and $ dollar, stole 4,100 bitcoins (at that time about $ 230 million) from one of the Genesis creditors.

Fraudsters used the methods of social engineering, introducing themselves to Google employees and Gemini crypto officers to convince the victim to discard two -factor authentication and transfer funds to the crypto -core controlled by them.

Among other defendants in the case of the theft of crypto acts, Jandiel Serrano, known by the pseudonym Versacegod, and Marlon Ferro, who, according to the investigation, also participated in the thefts and hacks of houses for theft of hardware crypto -boots, are indicated.

According to the prosecutor’s office, scammers used stolen means to buy luxury items and expensive entertainment through which they tried to wash the stolen crypto acts.

Earlier, the American cryptocurrency book Coinbase publicly recognized the fact of hacking related to the bribery of employees and contractors working in the support service outside the United States – mainly in India, the Philippines and Japan.