07 December 2023

Dutch man arrested on suspicion of stealing millions in crypto via phishing and malware

Dutch police have arrested a 39-year-old man accused of laundering crypto-currencies worth tens of millions of euros. The suspect allegedly used phishing lures to deploy data-stealing malware on victims' computers. In the early morning of 6 September, the suspect was arrested in the village of Veenendaal for money laundering, based on police tracking of bitcoin transactions.

"The funds were stolen using a malicious software update claiming to be from the Electrum open source wallet," according to the press release According to the release, law enforcement was able to track the suspect by following the stolen cryptocurrencies using a malicious software update for the Electrum wallet, a popular open source Bitcoin wallet application that allows users to safely manage their digital assets.