US Federal Jury Convicts Two Romanian Cybercriminals Of Cryptojacking

Two Romanian citizens were convicted by a US federal jury of using malware to steal credit card credentials and to mine cryptocurrencies. In the coming altcoin news, we read more of the court’s decision.

According to an announcement from the United States Department of Justice, the two Romanian used malware in order to be able to perform cryptojacking and to steal credit card data. The suspects stole other data as well which was later sold on the darknet markets but also they engaged in online auction frauds.

Per the Department’s reports, Radu Miclaus, 37 and Bogdan Nicolescu, 36, were convicted by the federal jury after a 12-day trial. Both of the cybercriminals were charged with wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit service marks, conspiracy to commit money laundering and more than a dozen other accounts related to wire fraud. Both of them should be sentenced on August 14^th in the Northern District of Ohio.

The criminal activities were conducted from Bucharest, Romania by both cybercriminals, and one other person who also pleaded guilty. The malware was developed a long time ago in 2007 and was spread via emails. The emails posed as legitimate communications from companies such as Western Union and Norton AntiVirus.

Per the press release, the recipients who were unlucky enough to click on the attached file got their malware on their device. The malware harvested email addresses from the victims’ devices and managed to spread the malware to millions of users. The virus redirected traffic to websites such as eBay, PayPal, and Facebook to almost identical websites for phishing.

Finally, the case was under a joint investigation by the Romanian National Police and the US Federal Investigation Bureau.

As previously reported in the best cryptocurrency news site, crypto frauds are circling the crypto industry after the bitcoin wallet service Electrum got under attack and lost millions of dollars. An AT&T Cybersecurity report shows that cryptocurrency mining activities are the most targeted objectives of hackers. Also, at the end of March, the Trojan Malware for android phones turned out to target users of apps such as BitPay, Coinbase, JPMorgan and Bank of America.