A crypto investor has lost more than 282 million dollars in Bitcoin and Litecoin after falling for a social engineering scam involving a hardware wallet.
On January 16, on-chain investigator ZachXBT revealed the massive theft, which reportedly drained the victim's account of 2.05 million Litecoin (LTC) and 1,459 Bitcoin (BTC).
Monero rises by 36% after a hacker exchanges stolen crypto for Privacy Coin.
Cybersecurity company ZeroShadow confirmed that the attacker carried out the coup by posing as Trezor's customer support. Trezor is a major provider of hardware wallets with over 2 million users.
The fraudsters managed to manipulate the victim into revealing their recovery phrase, effectively handing over full control of the assets.
After the intrusion, the perpetrator immediately began laundering the stolen money.
ZachXBT reported that the attacker used several instant exchanges, specifically Thorchain, to link the stolen Bitcoin to Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin.
At the same time, the attacker’s reliance on Thorchain has led to sharp criticism of the decentralized infrastructure provider.
ZachXBT pointed out that this was not the first time malicious actors exploited the platform for such purposes. This suggests that it remains a preferred target for criminals wanting to move stolen wealth.
Meanwhile, the hacker converted a significant portion of the exchange to Monero (XMR), a privacy-focused token designed to hide transaction details.
“ZeroShadow tracked outgoing flows and froze over 1 million dollars before it could be exchanged for XMR. The activity that can get through is likely to increase the price of XMR,” said Zero Shadow.
Notably, this aggressive buying spree triggered a significant price increase in the Monero market.
Data from BeinCrypto shows that the token rose by more than 36% over seven days, reaching a peak of nearly 800 dollars. The asset has since adjusted to around 621 dollars at press time.
This incident underscores a growing security crisis within the digital asset sector. Attackers are changing tactics and prioritizing social engineering and brand imitation frauds over technical code exploits to mislead victims.
Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis quantified the trend and reported a 1,400% year-over-year increase in fraud frauds. The company also stated that the average financial loss per incident has increased by more than 600%.
