Twitter User Helps FBI Sieze $260 000 in NFTs and Crypto
Hacking Your Way Into the FBI´s Arms
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has seized several assets from Chase Senecal, a residential located in Brunswick, Maine. The agency published a document containing the details of the assets including ETH, two NFTs: Bored Ape Yacht club and Doodle plus an Audemars Piguet royal oak watch valued up to $41 000. Everything counted for valued up to approximately $260 000. After months of tracking they finally knew the real perpetrator behind Chase Senecal and all thanks to the Crypto-Sleuth ZachXBT who had been conducting his own investigation of Chase. ZachXBT, also known as HZ online, is the one which made the seizure possible.
A Web of Connected Accounts
On November 20th an on-chain sleuth, (an online investigator), by the name of ZachXBT shared his details and finds about the FTX hack that had just occurred in a lengthy tweet. Stating three things he believed in most of the unsolved mystery of the hack: “Bahamian officials are behind the hack”, “Exchanges know who the hacker is” and “FTX hacker is trading meme coins”. ZachXBT contended that the wallet address 0x59, which was linked to the hacker, was a blackhat address and had no association whatsoever with either FTX or the SCB. He backed his suspicions by pointing out that the address had started vending tokens using multiple bridges to prevent the cryptocurrencies to be frozen.
One Purchase to Fail Them All
ZachXBT revealed later how he managed to track down all the transactions and figure out who was behind all of this. The crypto sleuth had been tracing the transactions related to the numerous NFT hacks and later figured out that the accounts which were connected to the hacks were also used to purchase the watch. The FBI took this to their notes and could automatically link the accounts to the multiple hacks. Reviews later revealed that Senecal had been buying access to Twitter panels which Senecal used to infiltrate Twitter accounts and deceive NFT users. Senecal used the pilfered funds to purchase the watch which would later be their undoing since the address that was used could also be linked to several Discord server attacks as well.
Crime Never Stops and neither Does ZachXBT
ZachXBT has had more than one involvement in aiding the government authorities to catch fraudsters on the internet. Last October the French national cyber unit acknowledged the importance of ZachXBT´s findings leading to the prosecution of a group accused of stealing NFTs worth up to $2,5 million using phishing scams. This may probably not be the end of the private investigator HZ.