A police operation in Turkey led to the arrest of twenty-four people who were suspects of stealing over 13m Turkish lira, roughly about $2.47million, that were allegedly stolen from a cryptocurrency company based in Istanbul, according to a local newspaper.
The company in question made the report to the police informing of the missing cryptocurrencies, mainly Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and XRP. The Istanbul Cybercrime Branch Office immediately began the investigation and was able to localize two wallets from the company that had been compromised and from which the cryptocurrencies had been stolen from.
Luckily, the police were able to locate the people connected to the crime through the investigation process, which eventually led to the arrest of the perpetrators. The police found that the suspects of the crime were communicating through a very popular online game called PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
As for the arrest, they all took place in different regions in Turkey like Istanbul, Ankara, Esmirna and Afyonkarahisar. The police were also able to recover about 54,000 Turkish liras in cash and 1.3 Turkish liras worth in cryptocurrencies, that was immediately returned to the company in question.
As for the suspects, 6 remain in custody and the rest are currently under judicial supervision until the court gives its final ruling on the matter. It looks like cryptocurrency theft continues to spread around, with hackers finding different ways to infiltrate into the most secure systems and therefore, stealing millions of dollars worth in crypto. The debate remains as to what is safer, if cold storage or wallets, especially after the death of the CEO of QuadrigaCX exchange and the missing key that holds a treasure worth more than $140m in cryptocurrencies.
