Hardware-wallet social engineering heist nets $282M and fuels Monero rally

Beincrypto reports a crypto investor lost more than $282 million after scammers impersonating Trezor customer support tricked the victim into revealing their recovery seed. On January 16, on-chain investigator ZachXBT revealed the theft, which reportedly drained 2.05 million Litecoin and 1,459 Bitcoin.

Cybersecurity firm ZeroShadow confirmed the attacker executed the heist by impersonating Trezor and obtaining the recovery seed, then immediately began laundering the proceeds through multiple instant exchanges, including Thorchain. ZachXBT reported the attacker bridged stolen Bitcoin into Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin and converted a significant portion into the privacy token Monero.

ZeroShadow said it froze over $1 million before it could be swapped into XMR, but remaining activity likely pushed XMR higher. Data shows Monero surged more than 36% over seven days to nearly $800 before correcting to about $621 as of press time. Chainalysis reported a 1,400% year-over-year rise in impersonation scams and said the average financial loss per incident increased by more than 600%.

Key Topics

Crypto, Trezor, Monero, Thorchain, Zachxbt, Zeroshadow