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Everything crossing the desk — scam alerts, threat intel, exchange watch and field guides, newest first.

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No. 1207Investigationcritical
Inside the Prince Group case: forced labor, pig butchering, and a record $15 billion bitcoin seizure

US prosecutors say Chen Zhi ran Cambodian forced-labor compounds where trafficked workers were made to run romance-investment cons. Here is how the scheme works — and how to spot it.

By Mara Okafor · JUL 22, 2026 · 4 min read
No. 1206Newscritical
How North Korea stole $1.46 billion from Bybit — and why the signature looked normal

A compromised Safe{Wallet} developer machine let attackers rewrite a transaction after it left the screen. Bybit's signers approved what they saw, not what they actually signed.

By Lena Vogt · JUL 22, 2026 · 5 min read
No. 1205Newscritical
A fake Ledger app sat in Microsoft's own store and drained $768,000

It carried a five-star review and a copied description. Victims typed in their 24-word seed phrase, and their wallets emptied in minutes — and the same trick keeps clearing store review.

By Dev Patel · JUL 21, 2026 · 4 min read
No. 1204Threat Intelhigh
Inferno Drainer and the rise of rent-a-scam crimeware

A phishing kit rented to affiliates for a cut of every theft faked its own retirement in 2023 — then came back bigger. The whole attack is one signature you can learn to withhold.

By Lena Vogt · JUL 21, 2026 · 4 min read
No. 1203Newselevated
Deepfake Musk, real losses: the coin-doubling livestream that keeps coming back

Hijacked YouTube channels rebrand as Tesla or SpaceX, loop an AI Musk, and tell you to scan a QR code to double your crypto. One DFRLab-tracked stream took $50,537 before takedown.

By Dev Patel · JUL 21, 2026 · 4 min read
No. 1202Exchange Watchhigh
FTX, nearly four years on: the ten-day collapse and the freeze that every failure repeats

The exchange froze customer withdrawals on Nov 8, 2022 and filed for Chapter 11 three days later. The same sequence recurs at every insolvent exchange — learn to read it early.

By Lena Vogt · JUL 20, 2026 · 4 min read
No. 1201Community Win
How on-chain investigators traced a $243M Bitcoin heist within days

A fake Google and Gemini support call drained more than 4,100 BTC from one Genesis creditor. Public tracing by ZachXBT and collaborators helped turn it into a federal RICO case.

By Jules Renner · JUL 20, 2026 · 4 min read
No. 1200Field Guide
Address poisoning: how a lookalike in your history steals your next paste

In May 2024, a single copy from a transaction history sent 1,155 WBTC — about $68 million — to a stranger who had seeded a near-identical address. Here's how the trap works, and the rule that defeats it.

By HexDiver · JUL 20, 2026 · 3 min read
No. 1199Field Guide
The scam that follows the scam: how fake recovery agents hunt crypto victims twice

Fraudsters posing as lawyers and 'recovery agents' target people who already lost money to crypto scams, charging upfront fees to return funds that never come back. The FBI's IC3 has warned twice.

By Mara Okafor · JUL 19, 2026 · 4 min read
No. 1198Data
The crypto-fraud numbers keep climbing, and every total is a floor

The FBI's IC3 counted $11.3 billion in reported U.S. crypto losses for 2025; Chainalysis puts illicit on-chain value at $154 billion. Here is what those figures mean, and why they run low.

By Lena Vogt · JUL 19, 2026 · 4 min read

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