Suspect Danish Zulfiqar tied to major crypto thefts may be arrested
A cybercriminal suspected of involvement in crypto asset thefts worth hundreds of millions of USD might have been arrested and had his assets seized.
According to the prominent blockchain sleuth, ZachXBT, $18.6 million worth of crypto assets tied to the British threat actor Danish Zulfiqar (Khan), also known as Danny/Meech, were consolidated into one address "in a similar pattern to other law enforcement seizures" earlier today.
Almost 83% of the consolidated assets is ethereum (ETH), while almost 17% is the dai (DAI) stablecoin, with small amounts of other crypto assets.
"Danny was last known to be in Dubai. It’s alleged a villa was raided and others there were arrested as well. Several sources say they have been unresponsive to messages for the past couple days," ZachXBT said.
No official information about the possible arrest has been announced yet.
Source: ZachXBT
The analyst reminded that he had already identified Danny in high-profile crypto thefts tied to creditors of now-bankrupt major crypto companies such as Genesis, BlockFi, and FTX.
For example, according to the sleuth, Danny was involved in the $243 million Genesis creditor theft in August 2024, together with other suspects such as Malone Lam, Veer Chetal, Chen, and Jeandiel Serrano.
"Danny was also involved in the Kroll SIM Swap from Aug 2023 that compromised the PII [personally identifiable information] of BlockFi, Genesis, & FTX creditors that has since led to $300M+ stolen via targeted social engineering scams," the analyst added.
His investigation showed that in the theft from the Genesis creditor, the criminals first posed as Google Support via a spoofed number to compromise personal accounts, and later social engineered the victim into resetting 2FA and sending funds to a compromised wallet, while also tricking the victim into sharing their screen and leaking private keys to their bitcoin (BTC). At least two suspects, Jeandiel and Malone, were arrested following the investigation.
Meanwhile, in the Kroll SIM swap case, criminals also used social engineering techniques and phishing campaigns to steal assets from the creditors of multiple companies.
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