Matthew Ho, a 32-year-old resident of Singapore, has been jailed for 10 years after stealing identities in order to purchase cloud computing services and mine Ethereum, the second biggest cryptocurrency, The Straits Times reports. His father has posted a $180,000 bail.
Riot Games co-founder Marc Merrill, who is known for developing popular multiplayer video game League of Legends, was among the victims of the fraud.
Ho was able to get his hands on Merrill's American Express credit card details on a dark web forum. He then managed to seize control over the game developer's Amex account and use it to register with the Amazon Web Service (AWS) in November 2017. As an esteemed game developer, Merrill had access to “elevated levels” of AWS's cloud computing services.
Because of his document-forging skills, Ho was able to fake Merrill's driver's license to fool Amazon.
The South Korean impersonator managed to mine $350,000 worth of Ether over the aforementioned period of time. For more blockchain news, please download WikiBit - the Global Blockchain Regulatory Inquiry APP.
Merrill ended up racking up bills surpassing $5 million within a few months. The fraud was discovered only in January 2018. He also used Merrill's identity to buy Google's computing services for a quarter-million dollars.
Amazon and Google refunded Merrill's credit card losses.
The charges against Ho were initially revealed by U.S. authorities in October 2019. A month later, Forbes reported that the millionaire founder of Riot Games was one of the victims.
Ho was pinned down by the police because of IP addresses provided by the tech giants.