According to a confiscation document published by FBI$260,000 in assets consisting of NFT’sof crypto currencies and a show were seized by the agency following the revelations shared by ZachXBT. News of the seizure came more than four months after popular on-chain detective, ZachXBTrevealed the identity of Senecalthe scammer in question while he was conducting a thorough investigation into his scams. ZachXBT says he is happy to have helped the justice system trace the operations of the scammer. Here is the report.
ETH, NFTs and luxury watch seized by the FBI thanks to ZachXBT
The document indicates that the FBI seized several assets of Chase Senecal, a resident of Brunswick, Maine. Cryptos seized include 86.5 ethers (Ethereum) worth nearly $120,000 at the time of this article’s capture. THE FBI also entered an NFT Doodle worth $9,000 and an NFT Bored Ape Yacht club valued at $95,495. In addition to the approximately $221,000 in seized crypto assets, the FBI also seized a asset non-cryptographic: a watch Audemars Piguet Royal Oak worth $41,000. The purchase of the luxury watch “was directly funded with money stolen from the hacked Twitter accounts”.
Interesting fact: the FBI evaluate the NFT BAYC seized in the amount of $95,495 in a presumably accurate manner. However, the current floor price (NFT offered for sale at the lowest price) of the collection is around $131,000. The community therefore wondered about the office’s calculation methods.
Apparently, the crook crypto paid large sums to gain access to Twitter accounts of popular crypto projects. He obviously took advantage of this by using the accounts to attract their communities to payment pages. In a message dated September 2, 2022, ZachXBT explained that after seeing the scammer bragging about the new watch on social media, he asked “around a few mutual friends who sell watches” and finally managed to get in touch with the person who sold this specific AP watch to Senecal. Unfortunately for Senecalthere blockchain never lies and payment was made through the use of USDC.
ZachXBT’s research helps government authorities tremendously
It is unclear what is the full scope of the legal proceedings that have taken place against Senecal at this stage. However, according to the law enforcement bulletin of the FBIfederal forfeiture is a law enforcement tool that allows the government to “remove – without compensation to the individual – ownership of property involved in a crime”. “This can occur in a civil proceeding, such as a lawsuit against the article, or after the conviction of an individual in a criminal trial”the FBI said.
Although the FBI did not officially thank ZachXBTthe chain detective noted via Twitter on February 3 that the seizure of property “was the result” of his investigation. It’s not the first time that the research of ZachXBT play a key role in assisting government authorities. In October 2022, France’s National Cyber Unit cited the work of ZachXBT to indict a group of suspected fraudsters suspected of stealing $2.5 million from NFT’s through phishing scams. “Can’t wait to see hopefully more scammers suffer the same fate in the future for hurting so many people in this space“, wrote ZachXBT
The article FBI seizes $260,000 in assets from scammer using ZachXBT appeared first on Corner Academy
