The Australian Federal Police (AFP) seized $6.4 million in crypto assets from a criminal ring leader behind an encrypted communication platform known as Ghost.
The seizure of the assets followed a successful investigation by the AFP on the criminal group and the Ghost platform which has become a playground for bad actors.
The AFP announced its arrest of Jay Je Yoon Jung, 32 which occurred on September 17 under an operation code named "Kraken".
Jung was charged with five offences which included supporting a criminal group.
Operation Kraken
Operation Kraken was the code name for the security and investigative operation that led to arrest of 32-year-old Jung. The AFP confiscated the $6.4 million worth of crypto assets after an analytics specialist within the AFP-led task force decoded the "seed phrase" of alleged accounts.
The Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce (CACT), under the AFP now moved the recovered loot to a safe storage.
The AFP acting commander Raven commented on the operation while revealing the length his men would go to uncover illicit financial activities.
" AFP is keen on identifying and restraining "ill-gotten goods such as cryptos.
"The restraint of these assets shows the technical capabilities and powers that the AFP, and our partners through the CACT, are able to bring to bear on organized crime." Raven said.
The announcements by the AFP revealed what the CACT will do with the confiscated money while also stating that the crypto assets were confiscated under the Common Wealth Proceeds of Crime Act.
"The CACT will seek to have the restrained assets forfeited to the Commonwealth in due course."
AFP's Operation Spincaster
Operation Kraken is not the first major operation launched by the AFP on crypto related crimes. In August, the AFP launched operation Spincaster in collaboration with blockchain Data firm Chainalysis. The operation was targeted at mitigating losses of crypto assets through Phishing attacks.
The operation revealed that at least 2000 Australian wallets were compromised. The operation hopes to prevent future loss of crypto assets by using a combined strategy of Education, tools and training.
The AFP in its findings acknowledged that cryptocurrency exchanges like BTC Markets, Binance, Crypto.com, Ebonex, Independent Reserve, OKX, SwyftX and Wayex were doing their part to prevent Australians from crypto scams.
Phishing attacks are pretty common in both the blockchain world and the corporate world. It is a major tactics used in running Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams and also very relevant in the crypto industry.
Phishing scams involves fraudulently obtaining the log in details of a victim through fake websites, emails or prompts.
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