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Man creates Bittrex account, deposits 1.3 Bitcoin – 48 hours later, it’s gone

Man creates Bittrex account, deposits 1.3 Bitcoin – 48 hours later, it’s gone

Spanish police are currently investigating how 1.3 Bitcoin could have disappeared from the Bittrex account of a man from Tenerife. The Bitcoin, amounting to a value of around 80,000 euros, appears to have been the target of a cybercriminal. 

The story was reported in La Provincia, a digital daily news platform. The report documented how the man had originally created an account with Bittrex, a well-known cryptocurrency exchange.  

The man deposited the amount of 80,000 euros ($61,000) and was given encrypted keys so that only he could access the account.  

At a later date, the man tried to access his account and was unable to. When he was finally able to access the account around 48 hours later, it was to find that his deposit of 1.3 Bitcoin had disappeared. When he contacted Bittrex, the exchange stated that it believed the account had been hacked by a cybercriminal. 

Now that the crime is being investigated by the Spanish judicial authority, Bittrex could face serious consequences. According to an expert on penal code: 

“manufacturers will be punished with imprisonment from six months to a year or a fine of 12 to 24 months. or merchants who, in their advertising offers for products or services, make false claims or show uncertain characteristics about them, so that they may cause serious and manifest damage to consumers.” 

According to the same expert who was hired by the complainant: 

“Bittrex allowed four access attempts before the theft, on May 26, 2020, from different IPs, with different locations and with different operating systems, all inconsistent with what was used by the user until that moment and Bittrex did nothing to prevent it." 

The fact that the alleged hacker used a different operating system to the owner of the account "should have raised a red security flag for Bittrex". The match between the account holder and the alleged hacker was said to be “zero”, and that there was no confluence between “IP addresses, nor city or region of access, nor service provider, nor operating system nor browsers used.” 

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. 

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