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A New York hacker Vitalii Antonenko, 28, has been nabbed by authorities at New York’s JFK airport and charged with hacking, trafficking in stolen credit card data, and laundering money with Bitcoin.
The New York hacker was arrested on arrival from Ukraine last year, having been linked with two crypto wallets that were used to execute transactions worth $94 million. The New York hacker at the airport also had in his possession devices that had several stolen payment card numbers.
Antoneko, alongside his, accompanies allegedly, made use of SQL injection attacks to harvest payment card information from vulnerable networks, and sold them in online markets (dark web). With all the charges pressed against Antoneko, legally, he is at the brim of bagging jail term of close to 20 years and pay a fine worth $500,000.
Trailing the BTC wallet New York hacker used
Antoneko was arrested after the Bitcoin wallet addresses he used to transact were discovered. Since 2014, he was said to have been changing BTC he received from these addresses to fiat from an unknown person. According to seniors special agent, Peter Gannon, Antoneko sold the coins below the market price, which made him a suspect of money laundering.
Authorities have been scrutinizing crypto activities in the darknet markets lately. Only a few weeks back did the Financial Crime Enforcement Network award agencies for making seizure worth $22 million in crypto from dark market operators.
Bitcoin, darknet operations
The New York hacker charges come at a time when the crypto community are trying to defeat links with illegal transactions. Earlier this year, the number of illicit activities Bitcoin is used for spiked to an all-time high. Sales in the dark market grew 70 percent last year, and illegal crypto activities reached $600 million.
Amidst this spike, law enforcement and crypto professionals have continued to up their skill to scale crypto frauds or hacks, so the same crypto hackers sharpening their skills according to blockchain inspector
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