Unknown assailant demanded 0.5 BTC, threatening to blow up Kyiv City Hall

On July 6, an unknown assailant reported a purported bomb in the Kyiv City Hall building. To prevent an explosion, he demanded a ransom in bitcoins. This was disclosed by the city council secretary Volodymyr Bondarenko.

The perpetrator, who identified himself as Edgar Kazaryan, sent an email to the Office for Citizens’ Appeals. For this he used the anonymous email service Anonymousemail.

“A new bomb threat has been received against the Kyiv City Council building. This time the demand was for a ransom of 0.5 bitcoin,” wrote Volodymyr Bondarenko.

In the email the attacker provided not only his address but also attached a link allegedly to his photo.

The administration building was partially evacuated of staff and visitors, but bomb technicians did not locate a bomb.

As of writing, the Miner wallet is empty.

As reported, since November 2019 a wave of false bomb threats began in Russia. This happened soon after the BBC published a report on possible involvement of entrepreneur Konstantin Malofeyev and FSB officers in the theft of user funds from the cryptocurrency exchange WEX (the successor of BTC-e) totaling $450 million. The unknown demanded payment of 120 BTC stolen from the exchange.

Different sources suggested that the “miner” could be a real Kyiv-based client of the platform, and even Konstantin Malofeyev’s team, which is allegedly trying to discredit WEX users and derail the case over the misappropriation of funds in the legal arena.

To curb the miner’s activities, Roskomnadzor, at the request of the FSB, blocked StartMail and ProtonMail, which he used to send the messages.

Subscribe to ForkLog news on Telegram: ForkLog Feed — all the news feed, ForkLog — the most important news, infographics and opinions.