A 21-year-old known Australian hacker has been charged for stealing $110,000 from online payment system Bitcoin.
A resident of the tiny Queensland regional town of Kingaroy was charged on Tuesday for the Bitcoin attack just three months after being caught for an attack on a US gaming company.
“Yesterday, members of the cyber and identity crime group, part of the fraud and cyber crime group, with the assistance of Maryborough Police located the man at a Hervey Bay address,” the Queensland Police Service said in a statement.
“Police will allege the man had possession of approximately $110,000 worth of Bitcoin (a digital currency) he allegedly obtained from these offences and will now be considered proceeds of crime.”
The hacker was allegedly able to access the Bitcoin funds from a March attack on what was believed to be Riot Games, so aggressive that the company was forced to reset popular title League of Legends player passwords in North America after 120,000 transaction records and credit card data was stolen from the company.
The man was charged in a joint investigation between Queensland authorities and the FBI, but not before also hacking the gaming company’s Twitter account where he posted screenshots of the stolen information.
Located 210km north-west of Brisbane, Kingaroy’s 12,000 population has ADSL2+ and 3G access, and recently saw fixed wireless switched on in the region.
The hacker was also charged with breach of bail offences and will face the Hervey Bay Magistrates Court on 24 July. The stolen currency reportedly remains in its original digital form and will likely be confiscated and banked by the state.
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