Cryptocurrency hackers steal over $ 600,000 in cryptocurrency from Ukrainian official

According to a statement by the head of the former State Enforcement Service of Ukraine, Maksym Kyselyov, hackers stole $ 647,000 from his cryptocurrency wallet. Somehow, Kiselyov managed to save this amount and invest it in digital assets, and now law enforcement officers need to figure out where Kiselyov’s cryptocurrency went and how he earned the money to buy it.

According to journalists of the StopCor publication, in May of this year, Maxim Kiselyov filed a statement with the Cyber Police about a crime committed against him. According to the official, from June to December 2022, he bought virtual assets and managed to save about $ 700,000, but his digital assets were stolen. The funds were stored on the Ledger electronic wallet, which only Kiselyov and his wife had access to the passphrase.

On the advice of his friend Oleh Hromov and his wife Vita Yefimchuk, the head of the State Enforcement Service transferred all his virtual savings to the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which was how Kiselyov planned to financially support his family in Spain. At the end of April 2023, the official’s wife, Oleksandra Horiaieva, noticed that the crypto wallet was empty. The woman called Gromov, but he assumed that there was a system failure. A few days later, Gromov sent a screenshot showing that on February 14, 2023, more than $ 647,000 had been transferred from Kiselyov’s wallet to another crypto wallet.

During the investigation, law enforcement officers established the following order of outgoing transactions:

08:10 on 02/14/2023 to a wallet serviced by Binance — $ 60,000 (TRC-20).
08:39 14.02.2023 to a private wallet — $ 10 (TRC-20), probably a test transaction to verify the details.
08:49 14.02.2023 to a private wallet — $ 587,074 (TRC-20).
After sending relevant inquiries, investigators found out that $ 60,000 was transferred to the account of a citizen of Ukraine, Dmytro Dzhoiev.

Later, the stolen cryptocurrency was converted into bitcoins. And the bitcoins, equivalent to almost half a million dollars, were transferred to the wallet of Russian citizen Daniil Boronikhin. on March 12, 2023, $ 10,000 was transferred to Oleg Gromov’s wallet. Subsequently, Hromov’s wallet received another $ 46,650 in installments over the course of a month.

According to the investigation, Hromov, Yefimchuk and Dzhoyeva are the persons involved in the criminal offense. As law enforcement officers learned, on February 14, 2023, Oleh Hromov crossed the border at the Shehyni checkpoint and has not returned to Ukraine since then.