Blockchain & Cryptocurrency
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Cryptocurrency Fraud
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Fraud Management & Cybercrime
Also: LastPass Warns of Phishing Campaign, Trump’s New CTFC Head Pick
Every week, Information Security Media Group rounds up cybersecurity incidents in digital assets. This week, Meteora CEO faced fraud allegations, LastPass warned of a phishing campaign, Trump taps crypto lawyer to lead CFTC, Mt. Gox delayed creditor repayments again and an Indian court blocked WazirX from using customer funds to cover hack losses.
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Meteora Co-Founder Faces Fraud Allegations
Plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit filed an amended complaint accusing Meteora and its co-founder, Ben Chow, of orchestrating fraudulent schemes behind the controversial Libra and Melania memecoins. The complaint claims the defendants exploited the likeness of public figures such as U.S. First Lady Melania Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei to lend legitimacy to what it calls a “coordinated liquidity trap.”
The suit alleges that Chow, along with marketing partner Kelsier Ventures, used celebrity and political branding as a façade to attract investors. The Melania token, touted as Trump’s official cryptocurrency, and the libra coin, promoted by Milei as a funding tool for small Argentine businesses, surged and collapsed shortly after launch. Milei briefly promoted libra on X, formerly Twitter, before deleting his post. A later investigation cleared him of ethical violations.
Chow was allegedly the central figure behind the operation, assembling a team including Meteora, Jupiter co-founder Ng Ming Yeow and the family behind Kelsier Ventures, headed by Hayden Davis. The lawsuit focuses on five tokens: libra, melania, enron, trust and M3M3. It alleges a recurring pump-and-dump pattern. Chow has denied wrongdoing and resigned from Meteora in February.
LastPass Warns of Phishing Campaign Exploiting Vault Inheritance Feature
Password manager LastPass alerted users to a phishing campaign that mimics its legacy vault inheritance process to steal credentials and passkeys. The firm attributed the campaign, active since mid-October, to financially motivated threat group CryptoChameleon, also tracked as UNC5356.
This group, previously known for targeting cryptocurrency platforms such as Binance, Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini, expanded its tactics to impersonate LastPass using fake domains and phishing kits.
The fraudulent emails assert that a family member requested access to the victim’s password vault by submitting a death certificate. They include an agent ID for authenticity and urge recipients to cancel the request by clicking a link, redirecting them to a fake LastPass login site hosted on lastpassrecovery.com. Victims are prompted to enter their master password. In some cases, attackers also follow up with phone calls posing as LastPass staff.
CryptoChameleon’s latest attacks also target users’ passkeys through domains like mypasskey.info and passkeysetup.com.
Trump Nominates Crypto Lawyer Michael Selig to Lead CFTC
U.S. President Donald Trump nominated Michael Selig to chair the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Bloomberg reported that Selig, currently chief counsel for the Security and Exchange Commission’s Crypto Task Force and formerly a partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher who specializes in cryptocurrency law, will soon go before the Senate for a confirmation hearing.
If confirmed, Selig would oversee the CFTC as Congress considers legislation to expand the agency’s authority over crypto markets. Members of the House and Senate have introduced bills that would position the CFTC as the lead regulator for digital assets.
Selig’s nomination follows the withdrawal of Brian Quintenz, a16z’s crypto policy lead, whose confirmation process faltered amid conflict-of-interest concerns raised by Gemini founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.
Mt. Gox Delays Creditor Repayments to 2026-End
Defunct crypto exchange Mt. Gox extended its creditor repayment deadline by another year, moving it from Oct. 31, 2025 to the same date in 2026. The delay, announced by the court-appointed rehabilitation trustee, marks the third postponement since the original deadline of October 2023.
The trustee said that most base, early lump-sum and intermediate repayments have been completed for creditors who met all eligibility requirements, but many are yet to receive their funds due to incomplete procedures or administrative complications. With court approval, the repayment window was extended to allow additional time to process pending cases.
Once the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, Tokyo-based Mt. Gox collapsed in 2014 after losing 850,000 BTC to hackers. Since then, the trustee has recovered significant assets, including 142,000 bitcoin, 143,000 bitcoin cash and about 69 billion Japanese yen. As of March 2025, 19,500 creditors had received partial repayments in BTC and BCH via Kraken and Bitstamp.
Court Blocks WazirX From Using User Funds to Cover Hack Losses
An Indian court ruled in favor of an XRP holder against crypto exchange WazirX, granting interim protection that prevents the platform from reallocating the user’s XRP to offset losses from a 2024 hack. High Court of Judicature at Madras Justice N. Anand Venkatesh issued the order on Saturday, barring WazirX from redistributing the user’s 3,532 XRP – worth about $9,400 – under its proposed “socialization of losses” plan.
Following a $230 million exploit attributed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, WazirX announced plans to spread the losses across all users, regardless of the assets they held. But the court found that XRP holdings were unrelated to the stolen ERC-20 tokens, and therefore should not be subject to the exchange’s recovery measures.
The court said that cryptocurrency qualifies as property under Indian law. The judge ordered WazirX to provide a bank guarantee or escrow deposit of 956,000 rupees – around $11,500 – as interim protection for the user while arbitration proceedings continue.
The ruling comes shortly after WazirX resumed operations, following Singapore’s High Court approval of its restructuring plan supported by 96% of participating creditors.
