Israeli Eliyahu Gigi charged with stealing over $1.7 million in cryptos


July 19, 2019, | AtoZ Markets - Eliyahu Gigi who is a 31-year-old Israeli citizen from Tel Aviv (capital of Israel) has been accused of stealing of over $1.7 million worth cryptocurrencies in the form of Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dash coin.

The criminal has stolen these coin from the users in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. As per various sources, Gigi has been charged with theft, fraud, and money laundering, which was reported by lawyer Yeela Harel of the cyber department in the State Attorney’s Office on July 17th.

Crypto scam of worth over $1.7 billion in cryptos

As per various other sources, Eliyahu Gigi and his brother were arrested in June, after being suspected of being involved in international phishing fraud. The person had set up a network of scam websites and has stolen crypto from various sources by the use of various forms of malware. He also kept transferring these stolen funds from wallet to wallet, to avoid himself from getting tracked.

The first doubt of suspicion fell on Gigi when the police received information about him dropping scam links on digital wallet forums. He specifically targeted websites which had a downloadable wallet manager. However, it is most likely that Gigi collected and misappropriated users’ account credentials to steal their crypto.

Suspected theft scaled down from $100 million to NIS 6 million

The investigation was handled by the cyber unit in the Israel Police Lahav 433 squad in cooperation with the Israel Tax Authority Yahalom unit. The criminal was arrested in June together with his younger brother, a 22-year-old demobilized soldier.

At the beginning of the investigation, they were doubted of having $100 million in the form of digital form which might be stored in digital accounts and stolen through an international fishing fraud. After the investigation, the concerned department came to know they have stolen $1.7 million worth of cryptos. 

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