Someone is disrupting cryptocurrency exchanges with Distributed Denial of Service attacks, with both Bitfinex and OKEx hit in the past 24 hours.
“ I was not aware of the attack against OKEx yesterday. I’m interested to understand similarities,” tweeted Bitfinex CTO Paulo Ardoino. “We’ve seen a level of sophistication that means a deep preparation from the attacker.”
While OKEx remains largely unaffected beyond, trade on Bitfinex was suspended for around an hour, cryptocurrency news outlet CoinDesk reported. Both exchanges are currently online.
Denial of Service (DoS) attacks aim to take services offline by flooding related servers with traffic. With DDoS attacks like the ones suffered by Bitfinex and OKEx, the traffic originates from a large number of machines, and commonly leverage botnets.
[READ: How GitHub braved the world’s largest DDoS attack ]
There’s currently no tangible evidence pointing to exactly who’s responsible for the attacks, and no proof that the attacks are connected, although reportedly similar.
Apparently frustrated, OKEx CEO Jay Hao took to Twitter to offer “double pay” to anyone who participated in the attacks if they snitched.
Police arrest head of $2.7M Ugandan cryptocurrency scam
Police have arrested one of the directors of a cryptocurrency startup in Uganda that closed suddenly and made off with investors‘ money.
A Mr Samson Lwanga, director of Dunamiscoins Resources Limited, was arrested last week and should appear in court later this week, local news reports .
It’s reported that the scam managed to con 10 billion Ugandan shillings ($2.7 million) out of victims.
The authorities are still on the look out for the other four directors of the company.
Like numerous other cryptocurrency-based scams, Dunamiscoins promised investors and employees large returns in a short space of time. However, after a month, the company shut down its offices, leaving investors in the lurch and employees out of work — many of whom were yet to even start their job.
“We have already opened a general inquiry file and investigations are going on. We recorded statements from the complainants and arrested one of the directors called Samson Lwanga who is currently detained at Old Kampala Police Station,” a police spokesperson said in a statement.
According to the police spokesperson, Mr Lwanga is willing to refund money to investors, but he can’t because their accounts have been frozen. The police are investigating if this is true.
At the time of Hard Fork’s first report on the scam, it was unclear how many people had been affected by Dunamiscoins.
However, in Daily Monitor’s latest update, it seems the scam is bigger than first reported. And the story sounds all too familiar.
Investors were encouraged to get their friends and family to participate, only to find out later that they had all been duped
According to the report, at least 1,000 people had registered with the cryptocurrency startup, however, some victims have said the number of people involved is closer to 10,000.
Dunamiscoins reportedly began operating in March, and was paying out to early investors. It came crashing down last week when its offices shut and phone lines were disconnected.
OneCoin’s ‘lawyer’ allegedly earned $50M for laundering $400M
The lawyer that allegedly laundered funds on behalf of cryptocurrency scam OneCoin reportedly earned $50 million for doing so.
United States prosecutors told the jury of the ongoing OneCoin investigation that Mark Scott — the lawyer that ran some of the OneCoin’s accounts — recieved a $50 million fee for laundering $400 million worth of funds, Law360 reports .
“It’s staggering,” said prosecutor Nicholas Folly.
Scott, who is a former partner at legal firm Locke Lord, is being accused of using a series of fake companies, offshore accounts, and fraudulent schemes to launder the $400 million on Ignatova’s behalf between the end of 2015 and mid-2017.
The defendant allegedly setup a series of offshore investment funds, called the “ Fenero Funds ,” which were purportedly used to launder OneCoin’s ill-gotten gains.
Prosecutors told the jury yesterday of “overwhelming” evidence against Scott. According to the report, Scott had sent an email saying he wanted to do “smoke and mirrors” for Ignatova. What’s more, a “pile of documents” seen by the jury during the investigation link the Fenero Funds back to OneCoin and Ignatova.
Despite the mounting evidence, Scott has continued to deny that he knew OneCoin’s activities were unlawful and that the Fenero Funds were part of OneCoin.
Scotts defense lawyer reportedly said: “There is no evidence that Mark Scott believed OneCoin was a scam.”
This is just one of the latest details to spiral out from the ongoing investigation, which is so far believed to have defrauded individuals from all over the globe for more than $4 billion .
Earlier this week, it was revealed that George W. Bush’s brother was paid $300,000 to meet with OneCoin figurehead, Dr Ruja Ignatova.
