Singaporean impersonated US game developer chairman to buy $7m of cloud services for crypto mining
A Singaporean fraudster was given the credit card and personal particulars of about 70 individuals in exchange for forging United States driving licences for Dark Web users.
The list included Mr Marc Merrill, the co-chairman of Riot Games, the famed video game developers behind League of Legends and Valorant.
Using Mr Merrill's details, Singaporean Ho Jun Jia, 32, opened multiple accounts on Amazon Web Services (AWS), charging millions of dollars to Mr Merrill's American Express (Amex) card for cloud computing services to mine for cryptocurrency, which he used for his own expenses.
Ho, who was unemployed at the time of his offences, pleaded guilty on Monday (March 7) to 12 charges, including impersonation.
He will return to court in April.
Ho was part of a large-scale cryptocurrency mining ploy that was investigated by the Singapore Police Force and the United States Department of Justice (DOJ).
The DOJ had described his activities as a "sophisticated fraud scheme".
The court heard that in 2016, Ho registered an account with AWS with his own particulars to buy cloud computing services to mine cryptocurrency, but was barred by AWS after a few months as he was unable to pay for the services.
In 2017, he forged US driving licenses for others using Photoshop and offered his services to a forum on the Dark Web that coined itself as the "#1 Fraud Community", said Deputy Public Prosecutor Ryan Lim.
In return, the forum's owner gave Ho the names, addresses and credit card details of 70 individuals, including Mr Merrill, whose name caught his attention due to his association with Californian game developer Riot Games.
Mr Merrill is the co-founder, co-chairman and president of games for Riot Games, according to the studio's website.
Armed with personal details such as Mr Merrill's middle name and social security number, Ho accessed Mr Merrill's bank account through the Amex log-in recovery process in October 2017.
Once in, he diverted Mr Merrill's Amex e-mails to a new account with a username that was similar to Mr Merrill's existing account.
On Nov 3, 2017, Ho registered a new user account with AWS using Mr Merrill's details. He used this to access about US$5.2 million (S$7.1 million) worth of cloud computing services from AWS on 40 occasions in three months.
He would access Mr Merrill's Amex account to retrieve documents needed each time AWS suspended his account for verification, and also used Photoshop to forge a US driving licence with a photograph of Mr Merrill he had found online.
In December, he purchased services worth around US$1.87 million. Charges to Mr Merrill's Amex card were unsuccessful, but Ho persuaded AWS to continue providing the computing services to him even without payment.
On Jan 27, 2018, AWS suspended this account after several failed attempts to contact him by e-mail for payment for earlier bills. Ho had racked up some US$3.21 million of AWS purchases that month.
The court heard that between Nov 21, 2017, and March 1, 2018, Ho acquired around 1,468.38 units of cryptocurrency Ether - valued between $818,000 and $2.14 million at the time.
DPP Lim said: "The said Ether was mined in part through the use of the cloud computing services which he had deceived AWS into providing, and were received into the accused's cryptocurrency wallets."
DPP Lim added that Ho had used a similar ploy to pay for cloud computing services under another AWS account and the Google Cloud Platform too.
He sold around 203.45 Ether units for around $347,800. He spent the rest of the Ether and the money he earned from its sales on personal expenses.
Ho, who was convicted of drug offences in 2019 for taking methamphetamine and jailed in the past for traffic offences, has not made any restitution or compensation.
The US DOJ said Ho's mining operation was, for a brief period, one of AWS' largest consumers of data usage by volume.
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