Romanian barber charged with $620,000 cryptocurrency theft

The Romanian Directorate for Combating Organized Crime and Terrorism arrested a resident of Craiova on suspicion of hacking “the seventh-largest cryptocurrency operator in the world,” based in the Cayman Islands.

The 38-year-old barber Ionel Romanu is charged with hacking, high-technology fraud, and money laundering. According to investigators, after the successful attack he exchanged the looted equivalent of $620,000 in cryptocurrency for fiat and began withdrawing in batches of 10,000 Romanian lei ($2,449) to evade identity-verification requirements.

At Romanu’s home, seven mobile phones, three laptops, five memory cards, two e-wallets, 10,800 lei in cash and 40,000 lei in the account of one of the exchanges were seized as evidence.

The accused was brought before a court in Iași, and he was remanded in custody for 30 days.

Earlier, Chainalysis analysts, in one of their latest reports, hypothesised that the Lazarus group, linked to the North Korean authorities, was involved in the hacking of the KuCoin Bitcoin exchange for $280 million.

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