US Charges Singaporean Miner Who Stole $5M Worth of Cloud Computing Power
American prosecutors have indicted a man from Singapore for using stolen identities to illegally utilize Amazon Web Services’ cloud computing power for crypto mining. According to the indictment filed on Oct. 1, Ho Jun Jia was charged with eight counts of wire fraud, four counts of access device fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft. Impersonating a game developer The document states that, from October 2017 to February 2018, Ho Jun Jia — also known under the aliases Matthew Ho, Prefinity and Ethereum Vendor — has stolen several identities and accounts, including from an unnamed Los Angeles-based game developer. Ho then used social engineering to gain access to admin privileges and large amounts of cloud computing power on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The prosecutors claim that he used illegally accessed virtual machines to mine cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC) and Ethereum (ETH). The prosecutors claim that Ho also stole identities from a man in Texas and an Indian business owner, likewise using them to reserve virtual machines on AWS and Google Cloud. Police arrested Ho in late September. When the case goes to trial, he could face charges in the Seattle Western District Court if extradited — which is possible thanks to an extradition treaty between the U.S. and Singapore.
Reference: https://cointelegraph.com