police

According to the Gulf Times, Sharjah police have dismantled four interconnected cross-border crime gangs, involving 33 individuals and enterprises.The four gangs are suspected of network attacks and data theft, money laundering using virtual assets, stealing digital wallets through social engineering attacks, and violently coercing victims to hand over wallet passwords. After reviewing hundreds of pieces of digital evidence, the police identified the suspects and launched raids.

According to CTV News, the Toronto police announced the arrest of 7 people in a violent kidnapping case targeting cryptocurrency holders and the subsequent investigation, including 3 members of the Canadian Armed Forces, with a total of 82 criminal charges filed.The police stated that the victim was kidnapped on July 25, handcuffed, and beaten, as the suspects attempted to obtain access to their cryptocurrency assets and corporate security systems, after which they were released. The investigation also seized firearms, drugs, and approximately 2,500 stolen military ammunition, and the case is still under investigation.

According to reports from Strait News, in March 2025, Zheng Mouyi, Zou Moumou, and others exploited the weak regulation and difficulty of evidence collection in offline USDT over-the-counter trading to plan a "black eat black" robbery crime under the guise of virtual currency offline trading.The gang raised over 340,000 yuan and invited virtual currency merchants for offline transactions. During the transaction, after the merchant transferred over 40,000 USDT into the virtual wallet controlled by the gang, Zheng Mouyi sprayed the victim's eyes with chili water on the spot and, along with others, violently seized all the transaction funds. After the incident, six involved individuals divided the stolen money. The day after the incident, the public security authorities quickly arrested all involved individuals, recovering most of the stolen funds and returning them to the victim.The Jin'an District Prosecutor's Office legally prosecuted Zheng Mouyi, Zou Moumou, and four others for robbery. In 2026, the court heard the case and sentenced the five defendants to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from five years and seven months to ten years and four months for the crime of robbery.

Recently, the police in Binhai City, Shandong, China received a report from a citizen named Xie, stating that 1,300 USDC stablecoins and NFTs worth tens of thousands of yuan had mysteriously disappeared from his digital wallet. There were no obvious transfer alerts or signs of phishing links in the wallet. The police began an on-chain investigation into the virtual currency transfer records and actively sought cooperation with enterprises to analyze the suspect's account.After extensive work, a major suspect named Chen (30 years old, from Fengyang County, Chuzhou, Anhui) was identified. On October 9, technical police officers went to Fengyang County to arrest him. Upon arrival, Chen initially denied the allegations. However, the police utilized the immutable and traceable characteristics of blockchain evidence to gradually break down his psychological defenses. Chen ultimately confessed to the theft. Chen has now been criminally detained in accordance with the law, and his family has actively compensated the victim for the losses. This case marks the first instance of virtual currency theft in Binhai City.

According to SolanaFloor, a TOKEN2049 attendee has filed a report with the Singapore police regarding a crypto security side event called Don't Get Played that took place during TOKEN2049.The event was promoted by self-proclaimed organizers Apex Accelerator and Stone Venture. It is alleged that the organizers pressured and induced attendees on-site to install malware that would allow the organizers to remotely take full control of their computers.

Co-founder Edison released an update regarding the recent data breach incident involving encrypted cards. Edison stated that the compliance and operations team is contacting affected users, has reported to relevant agencies such as the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC), and has formally filed a police report. They are currently working closely with law enforcement, and the encrypted card business continues to operate normally.

According to reports from Japan's Jiji Press and TBS, Japanese police have arrested 6 individuals suspected of laundering money for a fraud group through cryptocurrency assets. Police investigations indicate that the gang is suspected of handling approximately 91 million yen (about 580,000 USD) in fraud funds between February and March 2024, involving around 30 victims.The funds first entered the company's bank account, then were exchanged for BTC, converted to USDT through overseas channels, and returned to the fraud group. The individuals involved are reportedly charging a commission of about 1%.

According to a report by Reuters on October 9, the Philadelphia police stated in a statement that a model from the artificial intelligence company Anthropic submitted a false murder case tip through the Philadelphia police website. Anthropic notified the police earlier this week and stated that the submission was caused by an automated testing process.The police said the tip was submitted through PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com on July 18, 2026, involving an unsolved murder case, claiming to possibly have information about the case. The submission was marked as spam and was never forwarded to the Real-Time Crime Center for investigation or distribution. The police also stated that no unauthorized access to the system was found, nor was any departmental data leaked.Anthropic informed the police that after discovering the situation, it had stopped the related testing process and added verification mechanisms for future tests. The company plans to release a report on the matter on Friday. Reuters reported that Anthropic did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California stated that a 26-year-old man, Adam Iza, who calls himself the "Godfather," has been sentenced to 78 months in prison and must pay $23.4 million in restitution. He pleaded guilty in January 2025 to charges of conspiracy to violate rights, wire fraud, and tax evasion, and has been in custody since September 2024. This sentence will run concurrently with the 15-year sentence he received last month for an attempted Bitcoin robbery, which will not increase his actual time served.From August 2021 to April 2022, Iza hired off-duty Los Angeles County police officers as private security and admitted to conspiring with them to obtain law enforcement confidential records and personal data of individuals he had disputes with, obtaining court-authorized search warrants to track these individuals, and having the officers intimidate and threaten them. The Department of Justice stated that five former officers have been convicted for working for him, including 42-year-old Eric Chase Saavedra, who set up a security company providing these officers, and was sentenced to 21 months; 45-year-old Michael David Coberg, who assisted in extorting rivals and arranged false drug arrests, is serving a 63-month sentence. The prosecution wrote in the sentencing memorandum that wealthy individuals cannot buy "search warrants, arrests, badges, or guns" for private disputes.In another fraud case, since December 2020, Iza gained access to a Meta Business Manager account and its associated credit line, reselling it to advertising companies, with Meta clients being charged for ads they never purchased. After discovering this, Meta refunded the clients and absorbed the losses.

According to Decrypt, Carli Michelle Heller, a woman from Bonita Springs, Florida, was arrested for using Claude as a diary. Investigators stated that she wrote about "shooting" the Lee County Sheriff's Office on September 26, and the next day claimed she had acquired a new gun. Anthropic's safety system flagged these conversations as serious, and the platform handed them over to a human review team, which reported to law enforcement. Officers then identified Heller, went to her residence, and detained her. She was charged with making written threats of violence, and the case is scheduled to go to court in November.Anthropic's consumer terms explicitly reserve the right to "decide on their own" to report user inputs, outputs, or behaviors to law enforcement. Its privacy policy, effective September 10, 2026, also allows the company to share data with police when it reasonably believes that disclosure is necessary to prevent serious harm. Even if users choose not to use their data for model training, Anthropic can still use their data within three months, rather than five years; conversations flagged for review will also be used to improve harmful content detection capabilities.This is not the first case. The San Francisco Standard reported in September that Anthropic had referred a user to the police, who allegedly wrote that they purchased an AR-15 rifle and had the company's CEO Dario Amodei in their sights, claiming it was just a joke. At the time of the report, the user had not been arrested or charged, and an Anthropic spokesperson stated that this was "our protective process working as intended."

Greek police dismantled a cryptocurrency investment fraud gang and arrested 17 people, including 9 military personnel. Preliminary investigations by the police show that about 10,000 people participated in the investment, with an average investment of around 800 euros per person, and the amount involved is estimated to exceed 8 million euros.The gang operated by recruiting new members to obtain higher returns, exhibiting clear "pyramid" characteristics. In addition, the gang recently froze the withdrawal function and claimed that investors could receive double their principal back after 50 days if they doubled their investment. The police have currently seized about 280,000 euros, and the investigation is ongoing.

According to Decrypt, the European Union's law enforcement agency reported that Spanish police arrested a 16-year-old Romanian suspect in Alicante, suspected of being an administrator and main operator of the ransomware group KillSec.Two other suspects in their twenties were arrested in the UK and Romania, respectively; another developer who just turned 18 in August this year has been identified but has not been arrested due to some crimes occurring during their minor years.This operation, codenamed Operation KillSwitch, was led by the Hamburg State Criminal Police and the city's prosecution office, focusing on approximately 1,000 suspected attacks worldwide, with about 500 confirmed as successful intrusions.Law enforcement searched eight locations in Spain, Greece, Romania, and the UK, seized five central servers, and redirected related domain names to seizure announcement pages, while also confiscating at least 110 TB of stolen data.KillSec has been active since around 2024, exploiting software vulnerabilities and poorly secured cloud storage entry points to infiltrate corporate systems, copying internal data and naming victim organizations on dark web leak sites, threatening to publicly release documents to demand cryptocurrency ransoms, and if the target refuses to pay, they release the data for free.The Swiss Federal Police noted that the group also employed double extortion tactics, first encrypting servers and then applying pressure. U.S. prosecutors' charges indicate that a Dutch national residing in the UK, Fouad Eltibrizi (nicknamed Archduke), was indicted by a federal grand jury in Puerto Rico on September 16, subsequently arrested, and awaiting extradition, facing up to 10 years in prison. The European Cybercrime Centre, under the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, is assisting in tracing cryptocurrency funds and conducting digital forensics.

According to the Star newspaper, police in the central region of Perak, in collaboration with the National Energy Company (TNB), launched an operation in Seri Iskandar to dismantle an illegal cryptocurrency mining site and arrested two local men.The individuals involved are suspected of illegally connecting wires to power Bitcoin mining machines. Police seized 30 Bitcoin mining machines, routers, desktop switches, and a roll of wire at the scene. The case is being investigated under Section 427 of the Penal Code and Section 37(1) of the Electricity Supply Act 1990.Police emphasized that stealing electricity for mining is not only illegal but can also cause significant losses to the power company and pose a fire risk.

Recently, the police in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China, investigated a virtual currency money laundering case. The criminal gang used "free credit card repayment" as bait to attract ordinary users to provide accounts. They received illicit funds from overseas gambling and fraud through false consumption, then contacted currency dealers to exchange for virtual currency and transferred it to designated addresses abroad. Through financial and on-chain data analysis, the police identified nearly a thousand involved accounts, with suspects distributed across Inner Mongolia, Shandong, Jiangsu, Hebei, Chongqing, and other regions.The Digital Currency Research Institute of the People's Bank of China stated that it is currently using large model technology to analyze the flow of funds in virtual currency transactions, restore the gang's trading patterns, and uncover clues related to illegal industries. Upon investigation, it was confirmed that seven members of the gang were illegally engaged in payment settlement business without approval from relevant national authorities, constituting the crime of illegal operation, and were sentenced to imprisonment ranging from one year and two months to two years and six months, along with fines.Using virtual currency for money laundering is a new type of money laundering crime that has emerged in recent years. Lv Wei, the president of the Inner Mongolia branch of the People's Bank of China, stated that enhancing the monitoring and identification capabilities for abnormal fund transactions related to virtual currency trading has helped successfully crack down on a major money laundering case involving virtual currency pyramid schemes, dismantling more than ten money laundering and points-running dens, and confiscating illegal gains of approximately 130 million yuan. In recent years, there have been coordinated efforts to promote the conviction and sentencing of four cases involving money laundering using virtual currency, forming a strong deterrent against illegal activities such as money laundering with virtual currency.

According to a report by Fabien Arnaud from the French media Midi Libre, a resident in Saint-Jean-de-Védas near Montpellier, France, was the victim of a home invasion and extortion related to cryptocurrency. The police acted quickly after the incident and have arrested three suspects.It is reported that the victim had previously encountered a similar violent extortion related to cryptocurrency on April 11 of this year.

Recently, the Beijing Shijingshan police successfully intercepted a new type of cross-border telecom fraud case, freezing 780,000 yuan in involved funds and returning it to the victims. In this case, 53-year-old Mr. Liu received a fraudulent call from abroad while accompanying his child studying overseas. The scammer impersonated domestic police, fabricated false allegations of money laundering, and induced him to urgently request money transfers from his family in China.The funds were subsequently transferred into the accounts of two other Chinese students studying abroad. Upon investigation, it was found that these three individuals were all victims of the same fraud gang, exhibiting characteristics of "multiple scams in one case, with victims serving as money laundering tools for each other." The scammers first transferred funds into the accounts of some victims, then coerced them into exchanging for U currency to assist in the transfer, which was highly concealed and involved complex cross-border links. The police successfully "awakened" the victims through patient persuasion, preventing greater losses.

The West Midlands Police in the UK reported that a young couple was attacked by masked individuals at their residence in Solihull in December 2025 and were forced to transfer a large amount of assets to the criminals' cryptocurrency wallet. The male victim was seriously injured, while the pregnant female victim was threatened with a knife, and the suspects also stole several high-value watches.The police believe this was a premeditated targeted attack, and the UK independent charity "Crimestoppers" is currently offering a reward of up to £10,000 for any information that could lead to the arrest and conviction of the suspects.

The Polish prosecutor's office has charged a former police officer in the case of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange Zondacrypto. The Central Bureau of Cybercrime (CBZC) in Poland detained Artur K. on Tuesday under the orders of the organized crime department of the national prosecutor's office. He faces two charges: one for participating in an organized crime group, and the other for causing significant property losses to BitBay, BB Trade Estonia, and another entity, assisting in the misappropriation of entrusted property, aiding computer fraud, and money laundering. The prosecutor's office stated that a search of his residence uncovered documents related to the operation of the exchange, and he is being questioned as a suspect; the prosecutor's office will decide whether to apply for pre-trial detention.Meanwhile, the police in Katowice are searching and investigating a fuel depot, which is the last known location of Zondacrypto founder Sylwester Suszek before he went missing in March 2022. The case is classified as illegal deprivation of liberty rather than a disappearance, as a suspect has been accused of removing a hard drive from the gas station's surveillance camera.Suszek founded the exchange in Katowice in 2014, originally named BitBay, and relocated its registration to Estonia as BB Trade Estonia in 2020, rebranding it as Zondacrypto, claiming to have 1.3 million customers, most of whom are Polish. The exchange froze withdrawals and went offline in April, and the Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit revoked its operating license on June 29. Since August, at least five people have been charged, including former Polish Olympic Committee president Radosław P. All public respondents have denied the charges, and the related accusations have not yet been tried in court.

According to the Dutch police (politie.nl), the police in eastern Netherlands arrested two men suspected of using counterfeit EURC cryptocurrency to purchase multiple Rolex watches on the second-hand platform Marktplaats. The victims discovered that the tokens they received were counterfeit and worthless after the payment was made.After the case was exposed on the television program "Plaats Delict," the police identified the suspects through viewer reports. The two men are a 24-year-old male from Geleen and a 45-year-old male from Leiden. During the search, firearms and drugs were found at the residence of the former, who has been detained for 14 days; the latter has been released but remains a suspect in the case. The police remind the public to be cautious with cryptocurrency payments and to avoid using unfamiliar payment methods.

The Cyber Investigation Department of the Gangwon Special Self-Governing Province Police Agency in South Korea has identified 26 Polymarket users by analyzing public blockchain transaction records and on-chain open-source intelligence, and has filed cases against them for suspected illegal gambling. Among them, 18 have been referred to the prosecution, with a total bet amount of 12.7 million USD, and the highest single user bet reaching 4.1 million USD.The police launched a preliminary investigation in March and began filing cases against the involved individuals in May; the South Korean Communications Commission only ordered the blocking of Polymarket on August 18, and the transactions under investigation occurred while the platform was still accessible. The police are advancing the investigation based on Article 246 of the South Korean Criminal Code.