The US Department of the Treasury in cooperation with the US Department of Justice, the US Department of Homeland Security and the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has sanctioned Danil Potekhin and Dmitrii Karasavidi for involvement in a phishing campaign dated between 2017 and 2018.
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According to an official press release, the two Russians targeted customers of two US-based and one foreign-based cryptocurrency-related service providers.
As of total, the individuals managed to steal at least $16.8 million, Treasury states.
The US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin claims the bad actors have defrauded American citizens, businesses, and others "by deceiving them and stealing virtual currency from their accounts."
"The Treasury Department will continue to use our authorities to target cybercriminals and remains committed to the safe and secure use of emerging technologies in the financial sector," he added.
The Treasury claims Potekhin registered various domains that mimicked those of legitimate cryptocurrency exchanges.
Earlier in August, the OFAC also sanctioned four Russia-linked individuals for attempting to influence the US elections.
In total, the regulator sanctioned three employees of the Internet Research Agency (IRA), Artem Lifshits, Anton Andreyev, and Darya Aslanova, for alleged support of the IRA’s cryptocurrency accounts.
The revealed addresses of digital wallets are tied to bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), litecoin (LTC), bitcoin sv (BSV), z cash (ZEC), and dash (DASH).
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