Let’s Take This Offline

“A group of young men, some of whom connected on a Minecraft server, were suspected of taking a quarter of a billion dollars from an unwitting victim, setting off an incredible chain of events that involved an online network of cybercriminals, some of them teenagers; a group of independent digital detectives who track their efforts; and several law-enforcement agencies. Now, it seemed, the whole thing had culminated in the kidnapping of the Chetals — a real-world spillover from the brazen lawlessness of this expanding digital underworld and the culture that surrounds it.” NYT Magazine (Gift Article): They Stole a Quarter-Billion in Crypto and Got Caught Within a Month. “How luxury cars, $500,000 bar tabs and a mysterious kidnapping attempt helped investigators unravel the heist of a lifetime.”

+ The criminals’s key mistakes: Live-streaming the heist to friends. And not being president of the United States. Trump’s Crypto Corruption Scheme Goes into Overdrive. “In an astonishing escalation of the Trump family’s efforts to profit from crypto, a website promoting $TRUMP, the president’s so-called memecoin, announced on Wednesday that the coin’s largest buyers would be invited to meet him. The effort was, in effect, an offer of access to the White House in exchange for an investment in one of Mr. Trump’s crypto ventures.” (And you thought no one was making money in this market…)