compensation

Texas man Robert Dunlap was sentenced to 23 years in federal prison for his involvement in a cryptocurrency scam exceeding $20 million and was ordered to pay restitution to nearly 1,000 victims.Prosecutors stated that Dunlap operated a cryptocurrency project and sold Meta - 1 Coin, falsely claiming that the token was backed by $44 billion in gold and approximately $1 billion in artwork, including works by Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, and Salvador Dalí, and that the assets had been audited. A jury had found him guilty of mail fraud last year.

The U.S. Department of Justice has announced that it has initiated a compensation program for victims of the OneCoin cryptocurrency fraud case, with over $40 million in forfeited assets available for payout.The program is aimed at investors who purchased OneCoin and incurred net losses between 2014 and 2019. U.S. prosecutors stated that this move is intended to return some of the illicit proceeds to the victims. OneCoin was initiated by Ruja Ignatova and Karl Greenwood, with the related fraud exceeding $4 billion. Ignatova has been missing since 2017, and Greenwood was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2023.

According to official news, the decentralized GPU cloud computing infrastructure platform Aethir confirmed that its Ethereum-related bridging contract was attacked. The team promptly disconnected the affected contract and worked with major exchanges to blacklist the hacker's wallet, limiting the losses to under $90,000.Previously, blockchain security company PeckShield estimated the losses to be $400,000. The attacker exploited Aethir's cross-chain smart contract AethirOFTAdapter to transfer the stolen funds from the BNB Chain to Tron.Aethir stated that its Ethereum mainnet ATH token supply was unaffected and plans to announce a detailed compensation plan and incident analysis next week, collaborating with exchanges such as Binance, Upbit, and Bithumb to freeze funds. The Web3 security platform ZeroShadow is participating in the investigation. Aethir aims to achieve revenue of $127.8 million by 2025, with over 440,000 GPU containers deployed globally.

Backpack officials posted on platform X stating that regarding the witch determination issue for Backpack, the team has had in-depth communication with the anti-witch leader. Due to the enforcement level's insistence on the compliance bottom line of "one person, one account," some Chinese-speaking users have been affected.Armani and the core team are ready to immediately open an appeal channel and establish "Guideline No. 3": Any user who has operated 3 or fewer accounts on one device and has been determined to be a witch will have more than 50% of their points returned after manual appeal verification. In addition, the Backpack team will launch a special program in the coming days to compensate eligible users by repurchasing tokens in the secondary market.

Analysts say that the IoTeX private key may have been leaked, resulting in asset losses of approximately 4.3 million dollars; IoTeX officials reported on-chain attack losses of about 2 million dollars.

According to the Financial Times, victims of investment fraud in China are challenging a compensation arrangement involving approximately 61,000 bitcoins in a UK court. Representatives of the victims have filed an application with the High Court of England, seeking to overturn the proposal for compensation through the Chinese compensation mechanism, arguing that this plan may allow UK authorities to retain significant asset appreciation gains.These bitcoins were seized by the UK police during a money laundering investigation in London and are currently valued at around £3.2 billion (approximately $4.3 billion). It is reported that the law firm Candey represents about 5,700 victims in opposition, claiming that the current compensation scheme fails to ensure fair compensation.The fraud case is led by Qian Zhimin and involves over 128,000 Chinese investors, with the proceeds of the fraud converted into bitcoins and transferred overseas between 2014 and 2017. The UK prosecution has stated that some claims may result in a few victims and litigation funders receiving compensation exceeding their actual losses.

According to GoPlus monitoring, the account abstraction solution Holdstation suffered a supply chain attack, where the attacker stole developer session tokens, bypassed two-factor authentication, and injected malicious code into application updates, resulting in the theft of user funds.The attack resulted in a loss of 462,000 USDT, with the attacker's address being 0xcbfA60B39cfAeaE475f649fB6705bD477219bF8d. The Holdstation team has suspended services, committed to 100% compensation for affected users, and is working with security teams to investigate the incident, while also posting messages on-chain, hoping to encourage the attacker to return the funds through a bug bounty program.

The IoTeX Foundation has announced the latest tracking and full compensation plan regarding the ioTube cross-chain bridge security incident. The team stated that they have completed a full-chain tracking of the stolen funds, with most CIOTX already frozen on-chain, and the remaining assets mainly converted to approximately 2,183 ETH and transferred to the Bitcoin network. The related BTC addresses are currently under monitoring.The foundation promises 100% compensation for all users who held USDC, USDT, ETH, and WBTC bridged from Ethereum to IoTeX at the time of the incident: users with losses of $10,000 or less can receive a full one-time payout; users with losses exceeding $10,000 will receive an immediate payout of the first $10,000, while the excess amount will be distributed over four quarters, along with an additional 10% compensation issued in the form of 12-month staked IOTX. The platform will open the official recovery address and Claims Portal on February 27, and users need to consolidate the affected assets and transfer them in one go, submitting on-chain transaction information to complete the verification and compensation process.

IoTeX announced on platform X that after suffering a hacker attack due to a suspected private key leak, L1 has resumed online operations and completed an upgrade. The new version v2.3.4 includes an automatic filtering feature for malicious EOA addresses in the default blacklist to enhance network security. A comprehensive compensation plan for the affected bridging users will be announced within 24 hours.

Due to an oracle configuration error resulting in approximately $1.78 million in bad debt, the DeFi lending protocol Moonwell released an event handling update on the X platform, stating that the recovery plan has now been published on the governance forum, which includes integrating the Moonwell Apollo (MFAM) community into the Moonwell ecosystem (WELL).The Moonwell Apollo Treasury will immediately initiate partial compensation, with ongoing compensation to follow through protocol revenue. Additionally, MFAM holders and stkWELL stakers are set to receive compensation at a ratio of 1:1.5 (MFAM:stkWELL).

Binance's Asia-Pacific head, SB Seker, stated that the exchange will strive to complete compensation for Gopax GoFi users within this year. In 2023, Binance acquired Gopax to help users overcome the liquidity crisis, paving the way for Binance's return to the South Korean market.Seker mentioned that after resolving GoFi's repayment issues, Binance will work to surpass its competitors in the South Korean cryptocurrency market.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California has announced that a suspect involved in a large-scale cryptocurrency money laundering scheme has been sentenced. Jingliang Su, a 45-year-old Chinese national, was sentenced to nearly 4 years in federal prison on Tuesday local time for his role in laundering nearly $37 million in illegal digital assets, and he was ordered to pay over $26 million in restitution.Prosecutors noted that Jingliang Su was a member of a transnational criminal network that contacted U.S. victims through text messages, phone calls, and online dating platforms, luring them into participating in fraudulent cryptocurrency investments. Victims were directed to counterfeit websites of legitimate trading platforms and were falsely informed that their investments were generating profits, while the actual funds were being transferred and embezzled.Investigations revealed that the relevant funds were laundered through U.S. shell companies, digital asset wallets, and international bank accounts, with approximately $36.9 million ultimately being wired to an account at Deltec Bank in the Bahamas and converted to USDT. Subsequently, accomplices located in Cambodia transferred the USDT to the masterminds behind the regional scam centers.The U.S. government has confirmed at least 174 American victims. Jingliang Su had previously pleaded guilty in June to a charge of "conspiracy to operate an illegal money transmitting business." A total of 8 individuals involved in the case have pleaded guilty, including another suspect who has been sentenced to over 4 years in prison.

The stablecoin banking startup Kontigo, focused on the Latin American market, announced that it discovered and quickly blocked a security vulnerability over the weekend and has completed full compensation for 1,005 affected users, totaling $340,900 in stablecoins. Co-founder and CEO Jesus A. Castillo stated that his personal account was also compromised and described it as a direct attack on the company's management and users.Castillo posted on the X platform that the company has identified the attacker and that the individuals "will not escape consequences." This security incident occurred during Kontigo's rapid expansion phase. Just weeks ago, on December 22, the company announced it had completed a $20 million seed round led by FoundersX Ventures, with funds intended for product development and expansion into emerging markets.Founded less than a year ago, Kontigo has the support of Y Combinator. The company claims to have achieved an annualized revenue of $30 million in the past 12 months, processed payments exceeding $1 billion, and surpassed 1 million active users, all with a team of just 7 people. However, Kontigo has also faced scrutiny over "de-banking" issues. Media reports indicated that bank accounts used through intermediaries were frozen due to compliance risks, but Castillo denied the allegations, stating that the issues originated from the intermediary agencies, not the banks themselves.

Trust Wallet has released the latest update regarding the security vulnerability in the browser extension version 2.68. The incident affects users of version 2.68 who opened the Trust Wallet browser extension and logged in between December 24 and 26. If users received a push notification through the Trust Wallet mobile app or saw a security incident banner on the Trust Wallet browser extension, they may still be using a compromised wallet.It has been confirmed that 2,520 wallet addresses were affected by this incident, with funds stolen by attackers. The total amount of affected assets is approximately $8.5 million, which is associated with 17 wallet addresses controlled by the attackers.Trust Wallet has decided to proactively compensate affected users and is currently refining the compensation process and ownership verification procedures. They have begun communicating with victims who have reached out in the past few days. Affected users are encouraged to submit their claims through the official support form.

DeBot official released an update on the theft incident. The cause of the accident was the expansion and migration of the server room, which led to the leakage of some users' wallet information. The team has taken emergency isolation measures for the affected users' assets, but some users continue to use their previous wallet addresses. Hackers successfully cracked the leaked data and began transferring assets, resulting in a total loss of approximately $250,000. Compensation applications have been fully distributed.

The South Korean government is formulating the "Basic Law on Digital Assets" (Phase Two Legislation on Crypto Assets), which is expected to include several investor protection measures, such as introducing strict liability for digital asset service providers and establishing bankruptcy risk isolation mechanisms for stablecoin issuers. However, due to significant disagreements on core issues such as the issuers of stablecoins, the submission time for the government proposal is expected to be delayed until next year.According to reports, in the government draft that the Financial Committee is studying, stablecoin issuers may be required to allocate their reserve assets in low-risk assets such as deposits and government bonds, and to deposit or trust funds equivalent to no less than 100% of the issuance balance with banks or other management institutions to prevent the risk of issuer bankruptcy from being passed on to investors. At the same time, the information disclosure obligations, terms, and advertising regulatory standards for digital asset operators will be close to the level of traditional financial institutions. In the event of a hacker attack or system failure, strict liability for damages may be applied in accordance with the Electronic Financial Transactions Act.In addition, the draft may allow the sale of digital assets within South Korea under the premise of strengthening information disclosure, in order to correct the previous practice of "overseas issuance, domestic circulation" caused by administrative restrictions on ICOs.Although the legislative framework has initially taken shape, there are still disagreements between the Financial Committee and institutions such as the Bank of Korea on key issues such as the qualifications of stablecoin issuers, approval mechanisms, minimum capital requirements, and whether exchanges can serve both issuance and circulation functions. The Financial Committee stated that relevant departments are continuously working to narrow the gap in positions, and no final conclusions have been reached on the proposed plan.

Trust Wallet CEO Eowync.eth announced on the X platform the latest developments regarding the security incident of the browser extension v2.68, stating that the team has confirmed a total of 2,596 wallet addresses have been affected. Currently, approximately 5,000 compensation claims have been received, which include a large number of duplicate or invalid submissions attempting to fraudulently claim compensation for victims.He stated that accurately verifying wallet ownership is the core focus of the current work. The team is distinguishing between real victims and malicious submitters through multiple data cross-verification methods. The verification work is being conducted in parallel with the evidence collection investigation, and some cases have already formed clearer judgment conclusions, but the overall process is still ongoing.Eowync.eth emphasized that the impact of this incident on users has been fully recognized, and investigation and compensation are currently the highest priorities for Trust Wallet. The team will prioritize accuracy over speed, and will ensure that funds are safely returned to the correct users before promptly announcing further progress information, which is expected to be updated within the next day.

DeBot has released a compensation registration form, which affected users can fill out by logging into the DeBot official website (PC or mobile version), and the registration form will remain valid for a long time. DeBot stated that verification will be completed within 72 hours after submission, and 100% full compensation will be provided to confirmed affected users, with the compensation funds being directly issued to the DeBot secure wallet address.

For the security incidents that have occurred, DeBot stated on X that users can now quickly transfer assets from risk wallets to secure wallet addresses. Quick transfer steps: 1. Go to the DeBot asset management page; 2. Click the "Transfer" button to move the balance to the secure wallet address provided by the official.For affected users, DeBot stated that they will handle and compensate appropriately after the statistics are completed.