Matthew Ho, the famous cryptocurrency scammer has been jailed for 10 years after stealing identities for his theft.
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According to The Straits Times, Singaporean citizen, Ho, aged about 32 years, was sentenced to ten years in prison for using stolen identities to buy cloud computing services and mine Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency. His father has posted a $180,000 bail.
One of the victims of the fraud was Marc Merrill, a co-founder of Riot Games and the man behind the well-known multiplayer computer game League of Legends.
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On a dark web forum, Ho discovered Merrill’s American Express credit card information. In November 2017, he was able to take over the game developer’s Amex account and use it to sign up for the Amazon Web Service (AWS). Merrill got access to “elevated levels” of AWS’s cloud computing capabilities because he was a renowned game creator.
Cryptocurrency stolen using Amazon and Google servers
Ho was able to deceive Amazon by using a forged copy of Merrill’s driver’s license thanks to his expertise in document forgery. However, over the aforementioned period, the South Korean impostor was able to mine $350,000 worth of ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency in the world.
Within a few months, Merrill accrued debts totaling more than $5 million. Only in January 2018 was the fraud exposed. Additionally, he paid a quarter-million dollars for Google’s computing services using Merrill’s identity.
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The victim (Merrill) was not previously identified, even though the Department of Justice made public the accusations against Ho in October. Due to the ongoing investigation, Riot Games declined to comment. It’s unknown how his credit card details and private information were taken.
According to a search warrant for the accused’s Facebook account, Ho employed many strategies to deceive Amazon into thinking he was Merrill, the co-creator of the hugely successful, $20 billion-generating League of Legends game. According to the court document, he utilized an email address that seemed to be a real Gmail for the Riot Games co-chairman and made a phony California driver’s license with Merrill’s name on it. According to the feds, he provided Amazon with one of Merrill’s actual home addresses as additional “evidence” of identification.
