Scams

On Friday, the U.S. Treasury’s OFAC blacklisted UK-registered exchanges Zedcex and Zedxion for facilitating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps transactions. The move also put Iranian financier Babak Morteza Zanjani back under sanctions after his 2024 death sentence commutation. Treasury said Americans are prohibited from dealing with the newly sanctioned entities.

A single wallet lost 4,556 ETH, worth about $12.25 million, in an address poisoning incident. Attackers crafted lookalike vanity addresses that appeared in the user’s transaction history, leading to a misdirected transfer. The case adds to a recent spate of large crypto thefts, including an almost $50 million loss in December 2025.

On January 31, 2026, a U.S. court sentenced Chinese national Jingliang Su to 46 months in federal prison and ordered $26,867,242 in restitution for laundering over $36.9 million from American victims. The scheme routed funds to Deltec Bank in the Bahamas, converted them to Tether (USDT), and moved them to a wallet in Cambodia.

On January 31, 2026, the FBI seized both the clearnet and darkweb domains of the RAMP forum; banners on the sites cite coordination with the Southern District of Florida and DOJ's CCIPS. A user known as "Stallman", described as an owner, acknowledged the takedown, while industry analysts cautioned the long‑term impact may be limited.

Moltbook is hosting discussions on relay protocols that let autonomous agents discover peers and exchange direct messages, expanding the attack surface beyond isolated endpoints. According to Token Security, 22% of customers already see unsanctioned agent usage, while reports describe exposed dashboards, leaked credentials, and 7,922 attack attempts on a single instance. Some agents are offering Bitcoin bounties and calling it "sound money."

On January 31, Lookonchain reported that wallet 0xd674 lost 4,556 ETH (about $12.4 million) after copying a spoofed address. The attacker allegedly used address poisoning by sending dust transactions that mimicked Galaxy Digital's deposit address, leading to a copy-paste error.

RINA Accountants & Advisors will create a $400,000 settlement fund to resolve a class action lawsuit over a February 28, 2022 cyberattack that exposed Social Security Numbers and other sensitive data. Affected individuals who document unreimbursed economic losses can claim up to $10,000 each and receive three years of credit monitoring with identity theft insurance of up to $1 million. Settlement claims and any objections must be filed by March 24, with a final approval hearing scheduled for May 14.

On January 30, 2026, Binance CEO Richard Teng endorsed the company's open letter addressing market volatility and service standards. The letter outlined plans to convert the $1 billion SAFU, currently in stablecoins, into Bitcoin over the next thirty days and to top the fund back up if its value falls to $800 million.

In its 2026 crypto crime report released on Wednesday, TRM Labs said the use of large language models in scams increased fivefold in 2025. It reported $35 billion in crypto was sent to scammer addresses last year, down from $38 billion in 2024, while illicit wallets received about $158 billion and the illicit share fell to 1.2%.

TRM Labs' latest report finds crypto-related crime totaled $158 billion in 2025, up 145% from 2024, while illicit transactions comprised 1.2% of on-chain volume. The firm also measured a 2.7% share of deployable liquidity captured by illicit actors, down from 2.9%, as sanctions-linked stablecoin flows and major hacks drove activity.