UK law enforcement agencies will sell the bitcoins of the convicted cybercriminal to pay damage to his victims. The total sum of confiscated cryptocurrency exceeded 922 thousand pounds.
Convict Grant West hacked into large organizations to steal employee data. Its victims were 17 companies, including Uber, T-Mobile, Groupon, as well as the British community of specialists in cardiovascular diseases (British Cardiovascular Society).“West used a tool called Sentry MBR to launch brute-force attacks against 17 companies, where he gained access to user accounts, which he later hijacked and resold on the dark web to other criminals”, — Authorities said.
According to the investigation, since 2015 West has been selling users’ data on clandestine sites, thus making more than 47 thousand transactions. The convinced also made money from the marijuana trade and wrote guides for cyberattacks.
It was possible to detain the attacker in September 2017 following the results of a two-year investigation. On a laptop from which West ran campaigns that belonged to his girlfriend, police found data from more than 100 thousand users – email addresses, logins and passwords. Another 78 million records along with data from 63 thousand plastic cards were stored on the criminal’s SD card.
Three months after his arrest, West pleaded guilty to 10 criminal episodes. In May 2018, he was sentenced to 10 years and 8 months in prison.
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Soon after the arrest, law enforcement authorities found belonging to criminal £ 25,000 in cash, 82 Bitcoins and a small amount of Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash tokens. Another 200 thousand pounds in BTC were frozen by FBI agents who conducted their own investigation on the offender.
After the British authorities decided to dispose cryptocurrency to compensate the victims, bitcoin value was estimated at the rate of 8.5 thousand pounds for 1 BTC.
This is almost two times lower than the record rate of bitcoin, which was recorded shortly after the capture of West: in December 2017, his criminal state would have amounted to about 1.5 million pounds, and in the final court materials, the confiscated fortune is estimated as 922 thousand pounds.
In order to send this money to the victims of West, the offender had voluntarily transfer it to the authorities. According to media reports, initially he did not want to do this, but changed his mind when the judge threatened to add four years to the term.
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