A crypto investor lost 783 BTC worth $91 million due to manipulations by fraudsters posing as representatives of crypto service support.
This is reported by Finway
Uncovering the Fraud Scheme and Money Laundering Methods
Blockchain researcher ZachXBT reported one of the largest Bitcoin thefts in 2025. On August 19, the perpetrators managed to steal 783 BTC, equivalent to $91 million, from a crypto investor by using social engineering methods. The fraudsters impersonated employees of a cryptocurrency exchange support service and a hardware wallet. Under the pretense of providing assistance, they convinced the victim to transfer their assets to an external address.
“On August 19, 2025, the victim fell for a social engineering scam and lost 783 BTC ($91M) after the fraudsters posed as the support service for the exchange and hardware wallet. The stolen funds began to be laundered, and deposits on Wasabi were made by a threat actor.”
According to the analyst, immediately after receiving the coins, the fraudsters began using the Wasabi Bitcoin wallet to launder and anonymize the funds. This wallet is known for its advanced privacy features, which significantly complicate transaction tracking. The laundering started approximately a day after the theft itself.
Rise of Crypto Fraud and New Attack Methods
Experts note that recently, fraudsters have increasingly disguised themselves as representatives of hardware wallet manufacturers’ support services, particularly Ledger and Trezor, to gain access to recovery seed phrases. For instance, in the spring of 2025, users were already receiving phishing emails demanding private information for a supposed “critical security update.”
Social engineering remains one of the most popular attack methods in this field. Perpetrators attempt to deceive individuals into revealing private keys or passwords, and experts advise treating any suspicious communication as potential fraud. ZachXBT emphasized that there is currently no information on specific suspects, but the involvement of the North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group is ruled out.
Experts stress that such incidents indicate a growing scale of crypto crime. According to a report by Hacken, in the first six months of 2025, the cryptocurrency industry lost $3.1 billion, already exceeding the total losses for 2024. The main causes were access management flaws, compromise of private keys, vulnerabilities in smart contracts, and phishing attacks.
It is also reported that the incident occurred exactly on the anniversary of another high-profile theft – in 2024, $243 million was stolen from the lender Genesis. This once again confirms the trend of increasing risks in the digital asset space.
Earlier, it was reported that the hacker group Embargo had stolen over $34 million in crypto assets since April 2024, using similar phishing and social engineering methods.