Video: How Two Crypto Scammers Stole $230 Million in Bitcoin

I've got a crazy story for you today we've got hackers cryptocurrency designer bags and we got it all on video stay tuned what's up everybody welcome back to ecurity Planet in today's security story we're going to be talking about a massive cryptocurrency Heist that went down and how it all unravel thanks in part to the crooks bragging on social media and an internet saluteth who put all the pieces together before we get into the story remember to like the video subscribe to ecurity planet and click the Bell to be notified when we upload new videos and stories now that we got that out of the way let's go ahead and jump into it two young men Malone lamb and giand Del Serrano were a part of a crew that allegedly orchestrated a scheme to steal over $230 Million worth of bitcoin from a single unfortunate victim in Washington DC that's right we're talking about over a quar of a billion dollars that was stolen Federal investigators say that lamb and Serrano then use the illegally obtained cryptocurrency to purchase international travel service at nightclubs numerous luxury automobiles watches jewelry designer handbags and also pay for rental homes in Los Angeles and Miami so how exactly were they able to pull this off did they rob a bank or break into some high Security Vault no they use something that's known as social engineering which is basically a fancy way of saying that they tricked their victim details are still emerging but reports suggest that the crooks may have gained the victim's trust through communication allegedly posing as a fake company or a service provider all right so let's break this whole thing down first the crooks contact the victim pretending to be Google support so that they can access their personal accounts then they contact the user again but this time pretending to be Gemini support to inform them that their accounts were hacked the scammers then convinced the victim to reset their two-factor Authentication this allowed the scammers to bypass the 2fa security and gain access to the victim's account then they were able to send the funds to a crypto wallet that was controlled by them the scammers also use screen sharing software to share their screen with the victim they then tricked them into entering their private crypto Keys into a fake form on the screen that the criminals could see it also appears that the scammers used a fake support number to convince the victim that they were legitimate the fake number was very similar to the real Gemini support number which made it difficult for the the victim to tell the difference by combining these tactics the scammers were able to steal a little over 4 million Bitcoin totaling over 238 million at the time and after stealing this kind of money our criminals decided to lay low and by lay low I mean lamb and Serrano allegedly went on a spending spree we're talking about trips luxury cars watches the whole High Life they were even alleged to have party in nightclub spending over half a million dollars a night Witnesses also claim to have seen lamb in the nightclubs on several occasions gifting high-end Birkin bags to female clubgoers for those who don't know Birkin bags can range anywhere from a few thousand to a few hundred thousand one woman was even gifted a custom hot pink Lamborghini Urus in several Birkin bags as a birthday present it seems the criminals thought they got away but I'm not sure why all right so here's where things start to get really interesting you see word starts to get around about the lavish lifestyle that these were living and people started to do some digging one of those people goes by Zack xbt on Twitter and honestly law enforcement I think you need to hire this person to investigate all of your unsolved crimes because what Zack xbt was able to uncover was either remarkable or ridiculous depending on what side you're on Zack xbt found tons of information including the criminals real names chat logs crypto addresses transaction details and even video yeah and a move of Epic stupidity lamb and Serrano reportedly documented their entire crime spree on video they filmed themselves stealing the crypto discussing how to launder the crypto and they also filmed themselves enjoying their new found wealth and extravagant purchases basically they created a video confession Zack xbt carefully analyzed all the data and pieced together all the evidence and just like the criminals posted everything online well Zack xbt posted all his findings on social media media the internet goes wild law enforcement steps in and lame and Sano were quickly apprehended all that social media bragging turned into their undoing so what can we learn from all of this first never share sensitive information with anyone you don't know or trust this includes your passwords bank account numbers and other personal information next be wary of any unsolicited phone calls emails or text messages if you receive a message from someone asking for your personal information make sure you're being sus matter of fact don't even respond to it just ignore it even if it sounds like an emergency research first to verify and this is because attackers will use an urgent situation to pressure you into making decision quickly without thinking first lastly here's a bonus tip if you commit a crime especially one involving in cryptocurrency don't document the whole thing on video or post it on social media all right y'all that's it for today story let us know in the comment section below what you think about this whole situation and a big shout out goes to Zack xbt for his online detective work he can be found on Twitter at Zack xbt thanks for watching and I'll see you next time with another security story

This transcript was generated automatically from the video's captions and may contain errors.