Altcoin News: FBI Accuses NiceHash Founder of Fraud and Extortion

June 10, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

The FBI has brought charges against Slovenian citizen Matjaž Škorjanc, who is known as the founder of the NiceHash mining marketplace, where owners of computing power can make deals with tenants.

According to the Decrypt portal, Škorjanc is accused of extortion and conspiracy to commit fraud using electronic means of communication and fraud in the banking industry. The charges relate to data that he acquired and sold on the Darkode cybercriminal forum.

Škorjanc himself created Darkode and managed it under the nickname Iserdo. The portal was closed in 2015, more than 70 people were arrested. During the last months, the work of the forum was resumed.

Together with three other suspects, Škorjanc is accused of breaking into bank accounts and stealing credit card information in order to gain access to the identification data of their owners. Damage from the platform activities from 2008 to 2013 estimated at $4.5 million.

Škorjanc is not for the first time in the field of view of law enforcement. In 2013, he was sentenced to four years and ten months in prison for creating malicious software that was used when running the Mariposa botnet, which infected more than a million computers.

NiceHash was in the headlines in December 2017, when, as a result of a hacker attack, the mining marketplace lost 4,700 Bitcoins or $64 million at the exchange rate at that time.

The arrest warrant for Škorjanc was made public on Sunday. Currently, the suspect is on the run.

Author: Marko Vidrih