US charged Singaporean coin miner for conning worth $5M

A 29 years old Singaporean Ho Jun Jia, A.K.A. Matthew Ho aka “Prefinity,” aka “Ethereum Vendor” has been charged for federal crimes. He allegedly mined cryptocurrencies using stolen computer power and services, obtained with stolen identity and credit card information. He was charged in Seattle, Washington and then was taken into custody by the Singapore Police Force on September 26. He is now being investigated for various offenses committed under Singapore law.

According to the indictment, initially filed on 1st of October, Matthew was charged with eight counts of wire fraud, four counts of access device fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft.

The documents also state that Ho Jun Jia stole several identities and accounts including California and Texas residents and an unnamed Los Angeles-based game developer. He used social engineering to access admin privileges and a big amount of cloud computing power on Amazon Web Services.

The worth of the computing service used by Ho Jin Jua is above $5M. The prosecutor also claims that at a certain point Ho became the largest AWS data consumer. He also added, "In the few months his scheme remained active, Ho consumed more than $5 million in unpaid cloud computing services with his mining operation and, for a brief period, was one of <a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/08/arm_custom_instructions/">Amazon Web Services</a> (AWS) largest consumers of data usage by volume. Some of the bills were paid by the California game developer’s financial staff before the fraud was detected."

The indictment describes this activity as Sophisticated Fraud Scheme. Ho stole personal and financial information to open several accounts on those names without any authorization. This way he generated cryptocurrency units and sold those and exchanged it for regular currency.

According to The Department of Justice, He created a "web of phony e-mail accounts and used social engineering techniques to trick cloud computing providers to approve heightened account privileges, increased computer processing power and storage, and deferred billing"

"In the few months his scheme remained active, Ho consumed more than US$5 million (S$6.9 million) in unpaid cloud computing services with his mining operation and, for a brief period, was one of Amazon Web Services (<a href="https://www.cryptoknowmics.com/crypto/liechtenstein-announces-blockchain-friendly-laws/">AWS</a>) largest consumers of data usage by volume," the DOJ added.

Wire fraud is punishable by up to 20 years in prison, and access device fraud by up to 10 years. Aggravated identity theft is punishable by a mandatory two years in prison to run consecutive to any other sentences imposed in the case. The DOJ said that the case is investigated by the <a href="https://www.cryptoknowmics.com/crypto/french-cyber-police-elimanates-monero-mining-virus/">FBI Cyber Crime</a> Unit in Seattle office with the help of the Singapore Police Force’s Technology Crime Investigation Branch.

US charged Singaporean coin miner for conning worth $5M

Debarati is a finance MBA who is a keen observer of the current crypto currency market. She likes to read and write about the game changer and industry transforming news of the market.

US charged Singaporean coin miner for conning worth $5M

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