An investigation into how Greavys (Malone Iam), Wiz (Veer Chetal), and Box (Jeandiel Serrano) stole $243M from a single person last month in a highly sophisticated social engineering attack and my efforts which have helped lead to multiple arrests and millions frozen.
Los Angeles law enforcement arrested two individuals on Monday, Sept. 18, in connection to a $243 million social engineering attack on a lone Genesis creditor.
The arrests come after a months-long investigation spearheaded by crypto sleuth ZachXBT, who identified the three scammers involved in the massive crypto heist. Iam, Chetal, and Serrano allegedly swindled a single Genesis Global creditor out of nearly $250 million in August. The trio impersonated a Gemini customer support agent to pull off the large-scale theft.
According to ZachXBT’s investigation, the scammers shared multiple videos of themselves celebrating the successful heist and expressing euphoria over the stolen loot. In one video obtained by the sleuth, one of the perpetrators shouts, “I’m gonna spazz,” after the group received some 4,064 Bitcoin (BTC) from the deceived Genesis claimant.
With the help of other bad actors, the funds were then split across over a dozen exchanges and on-chain trading venues, including Binance, eXch, and Thorswap. The hackers also swapped the stolen wealth between Bitcoin, Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Monero (XMR) to try and cover their digital footprint. Following the heist, members of the hacker trio went on a spending spree, splurging at Los Angeles clubs and buying luxury cars in Miami.
ZachXBT, together with blockchain forensic specialists CF Investigators and ZeroShadow, petitioned the Binance Security Team for help, which led to $9 million in stolen assets being frozen.
The victim also recovered around $500,000 and worked closely with experts in the investigation, ZachXBT said in a Sept. 19 X thread. Iam and Serrano, two-thirds of the original scammer trio, were arrested in LA on Sept. 18.
Large on-chain transactions during the arrests suggest that local police seized more funds from the suspects, as previously reported by ZachXBT. At press time, the whereabouts of Chetal, the group’s final member not yet arrested, are still unknown.
Genesis, a Digital Currency Group subsidiary, owed $4 billion to 100,000 creditors, with about $10 billion in liabilities. The crypto lender was one of several businesses caught in the debacle involving FTX and Three Arrows Capital, fallen crypto giants that collapsed after Do Kwon’s Terraform blockchain ecosystem imploded.
