Riot Games' Millionaire Founder Defrauded In $5 Million Amazon Cloud Cryptocurrency Mining Scam, DOJ Says

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/11/07/riot-games-millionaire-founder-defrauded-in-5-million-amazon-cloud-cryptocurrency-mining-scam-doj-says/

By Thomas Brewster
Forbes.com
November 7, 2019

Marc Merrill, the cofounder of Riot Games, was the victim of a massive fraud 
that started in November 2014, when his American Express credit card 
information was used to buy up cloud computing power from Amazon, Google and 
others, according to a just-unsealed court filing discovered by Forbes.

The man accused of stealing Merrill's identity, Singaporian national Matthew 
Ho, was said by investigators to have used those Amazon and Google servers to 
mine various cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ether. Before it was 
eventually noticed in January 2018, Ho had racked up bills totalling $5 million 
with Jeff Bezos' tech giant, according to the government's allegations. At 
least one payment of that bill, for $135,000, was made on Merrill's Amex card 
in December 2017. (Court documents didn’t clarify whether the full $5 million 
bill had been paid, though the DOJ did say “some” were). The same card had been 
used to pay for Riot Games' actual Amazon Web Services cloud computing 
products.

Thought the charges against Ho were revealed by the Department of Justice in 
October, the victim - Merrill - had not previously been revealed. Neither 
Merrill nor Riot Games had responded to requests for comment at the time of 
publication. It's unclear how his personal information and credit card data 
were pilfered.

Ho tricked Amazon into believing he was Merrill, who co-created the massively 
popular, $20 billion-making League of Legends title, in various ways, as per a 
search warrant for the accused's Facebook account. He'd created a fake 
Californian driving license that carried Merrill's name and used an email 
address that appeared to be a legitimate Gmail for the Riot Games co-chairman, 
according to the court filing. For further "proof" of identity, he presented 
Amazon with one of Merrill's real home addresses, the feds said.

[...]

--
Subscribe to InfoSec News
https://www.infosecnews.org/subscribe-to-infosec-news/
https://twitter.com/infosecnews_