Halo’s HUMINT Team was in contact with a
Nigerian-based Barry Silbert Impersonator via Telegram
using handle @Barry_Silber. This ”Barry Silbert”
acknowledged DCG affiliation, while asking to setup a wallet
on the blockchain. This impersonator did not have any other
scamming mechanisms in place, such as, a website at this
time. It was recommended to send funds to their ”Passbook
Bank Account”, claiming interest earned dividends every four
hours. They also offered to credit interest back to the wallet
address. The BTC wallet address and bank account details
are listed below.
Way Ahead: Enforce take down of the Telegram handle and
reach out to Passbook Bank to flag the account. Additionally,
Halo flagged the BTC Wallet address via Genesis for Illicit
activity and obfuscating funds. Here is a summary of the
activity:
§ ~75% of funds received were from exchanges
§ ~84% of outbound transfers were washed via 41 total
exchanges; majority through Binance, Houbi, Bithump,
OKEx, Upbit, HaoBTC
§ One suspicious path via Paxful was correlated to a
customer submitted fraud incident (NFI)