You're reading a newsletter from The Indicator from Planet Money. Once a week, we curate our favorite stories and insights on business, finance, economics and why they matter. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox every Friday.Scammers can even make money off of people starved for FAN fiction.That's my takeaway from a fake website popping up that tried to sell computer-generated audiobooks of fan fiction, which is content created by ANYONE based off of existing works.
"Fifty Shades of Grey" started as a fanfic of Twilight, for example.This scam website popped up in the wake of the uber-popular fan fiction website AO3, Archive of our Own, going down for an estimated two to four weeks after a "security incident." People are starved for their stories and apparently will click on anything.Lucky for the world, the scam website has been taken down.Coming upWhat to know: North Korea just loves stealing crypto.
They love it! It's become a major part of their economy.Last week, a state-sponsored hacking group called "TraderTraitor" executed the largest crypto theft in history, stealing $6.43 billion from Binance, a massive cryptocurrency exchange.
$2.85 billion has been frozen or seized, according to Elliptic, a crypto analytics & compliance firm.But $3.35 billion is still linked to the group.
"TraderTraitor" is actively trying to launder this money (yes, crypto is surprisingly traceable).A huge part of the stolen funds are in stablecoin, which can be frozen.
Whatever isn't already frozen, the hacking group is trying to launder it and FAST.So how are they doing it?How are the criminals laundering these assets?: Laundering this much crypto is NOT simple.
The intelligence firm Elliptic broke down how "TraderTraitor" is trying to quickly protect its newfound loot.First of all, they want to turn any Stablecoin into assets that cannot be frozen, like Ether (ETH).
From there, the group is using automation to create LOTS of new wallets to filter small amounts of cry...