South Florida Man Allegedly Drains $220,000 in Crypto After Infecting Games With Malware
Authorities have charged a South Florida man in connection with a scheme that allegedly drained hundreds of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency from gamers. Zyaire Dontaevious Zamarion Wilkins, 21, of North Lauderdale, is accused of conspiracy to obtain information by computer for private financial gain, according to WPLG Local 10.
The FBI alleges that Wilkins and his co-conspirators launched eight games embedded with malware, including BlockBlasters, Dashverse, Lunara, and PirateFi, to gain unauthorized access to cryptocurrency wallets. The campaign reportedly infected the devices of about 8,000 people, giving the group access to 80 crypto wallets and enabling them to drain at least $220,000 in digital assets.
According to the FBI, encrypted chats on Signal showed that Wilkins purchased a “remote access Trojan” program for $10,000. The group also allegedly ran bots on Discord, Telegram, X, and LinkedIn to identify individuals with large cryptocurrency holdings and send them targeted messages urging them to download the infected games.
“After their victims downloaded the games, the conspirators used the malware to access and steal private user data and credentials. They went through the stolen data and identified any information that could be used to access, without authorization, cryptocurrency accounts of others and steal cryptocurrencies from their victims,” the FBI stated.
If convicted, Wilkins faces up to 10 years in prison.