Fraudster reportedly stole $5.6M from FTX creditors using AI
As the bankrupt major crypto exchange FTX has started repaying its debts to former customers, blockchain analysts claim they've identified a perpetrator (or a group of them) who defrauded two FTX creditors of $5.6 million.
Image by Dado Ruvic | Reuters
As the bankrupt major crypto exchange FTX has started repaying its debts to former customers, blockchain analysts claim they've identified a perpetrator (or a group of them) who defrauded two FTX creditors of $5.6 million.
Crypto intelligence platform Inca Digital said it has identified fraudulent activity in the secondary market of FTX debt claims trading, where at least two separate companies were defrauded by an individual or group operating under multiple aliases. According to the report, the funds were then laundered via crypto exchanges Gate.io, CoinEx, and Binance.
Inca Digital said it has established that the perpetrator appeared to be the same individual using two different names: Lim Chee Chong and Teh Jin Loon. Moreover, "they" listed addresses at the same building, with only slight variations in the details.
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The investigation found that in June 2024, the perpetrator contacted two unnamed companies regarding the sale of their FTX claims. Chong/Loon managed to convince the companies – despite their due diligence, and verification of the claims as legitimate – that the transaction was safe.
However, soon after, Kroll, the company managing FTX's bankruptcy claims, informed both companies that they had been defrauded and that Chong/Loon was not an FTX customer, as they had pretended to be.
Inca Digital emphasized that the fact that the claims offered by the suspect were verified as legitimate suggests that someone has unauthorized access to FTX claim data. As reported earlier, in August 2023, Kroll suffered a security breach after an employee’s phone was SIM-swapped. However, the company stated that only "non-sensitive" customer data, such as names, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and data about their FTX accounts, was compromised.
Meanwhile, Inca Digital's investigation also showed that the perpetrator likely used fraudulent ID cards to trick victims and possibly even utilized AI face-changing tools to alter their appearance.
"In the due diligence call recordings, the perpetrator’s face showed suspicious random movements," the investigators said, adding that further analysis showed the perpetrator’s photos to be a close match to those of Kurtis Lau Wai-kin, aka Toyz, a former professional League of Legends player who is currently in prison.