Thief cuts photo of the sperm of the victim in the apartment, steals $ 1.7 million in crypto

A former Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) diver has admitted to court to steal $ 1.7 million Cryptocurrency After having secretly photographed a seed sentence that belongs to a Chinese national who lives in Singapore.

The 34-year-old Teo Rong Xuan, who previously served in the marine diving unit of the army, admitted charges, including house breaches, a computer system abuse Straits Times.

Seed sentences – typically a series of random words – work as the head key to cryptocurrency wallet. Unlike a password, a stolen seed sense cannot be reset, which means that access to funds has been irrevocably lost once it is compromised.

Theft of seeds is one of the most common ways for thieves and hackers to gain access to a person’s wallet. Infrastructure attacks focused on private keys and seed sentences last year 70% of the stolen funds formed, according to TRM Labs. The company added that they are often obtained by poor storage practices, phishing campaigns and malware implementation.

Court reports show that Teo met the 30-year-old victim in mid-2022 through a mutual friend. During a football match at the victim’s house, Teo received a condominium access card under the pretension to help another guest. He did not return the card.

On December 31, 2022, Teo operated that access to re -enter the unity of the victim while the victim was out. He found and photographed a piece of paper with the seed sentence of 24 words for the Ledger Nano X Hardware wallet of the victim. The next day Teo used the seed sentence to transfer $ 1.7 million in the USDT stabile To his own wallet.

Prosecutors said Teo spent the money on luxury watches, online gambling and mortgage payments. About $ 1.1 million was converted into US dollars and moved to his bank account. Teo later admitted to the crime after the victim discovered that the missing funds and blockchain researchers attached the theft to his wallet.

Teo claimed that he was motivated by heavy financial losses after the collapse of 2022 of Cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

Crypto -wallet Security

Industry experts said that the case illustrates how human errors and weak storage practices continue to undermine digital asset protection.

“This case is a strong memory that user behavior is just as important as product security,” said Veronica Wong, CEO and co-founder of Crypto Wallet Suite Safepal, Decrypt.

She advised that long-term hardware portfolios use with coded chipsets, while active traders could consider cloudbackups, although they warned that such methods also introduce risks associated with coding of third parties and account access.

Petr Kozyakov, co-founder and CEO of the Mercuryo payment platform, added that the case emphasized how safe a sense of seed is crucial for people who are self-herb.

“Storage in a safe location, such as a bank safety box, is the best practice. Unfortunately, there is no panacea for keeping digital assets safe,” he said.

He said that other best practices would be to write a seed sentence on a sustainable material such as fire -resistant metal plates, and to save them at multiple secure locations, or to use a wallet with multiple signatures, which requires approvals of two or more private keys to allow any transaction of their wallet.