Marc Merril Was A Fraud Victim
It turned out that the anonymous victim of the Singaporean man, having stolen an another person’s identity, was the Marc Merril, millionaire game developer. The thief stole his identity for bursting his mining process. He used Google cloud as well as Amazon Web Services’ power. Thus he got the access to the huge possibility for mining.
Marc Merril, millionaire game developer was not the first victim
Millionaire game developer, was not the first victim of the thief. Previously the name of the person suffered Matthew Ho’s scheme was not stated. Hough Riot Games is the company name widely known in a narrow circle. They are behind much more popular game League of Legends.
Matthew Ho managed to use Merrill’s American Express credit card. He got the information needed for purchasing cloud computing power from Amazon and Google. US prosecutors indicated Ho back in October. It turned out that the total amount of power he got is worth $5 million in total. Ironically, this made Ho the largest AWS data consumer ever for this period of time. His scheme was active during some months and Ho used the power for mining. Before the fraud was detected game developer’s financial staff in California covered part of the bills.
How did Ho do it?
According to the investigators’ report, Ho was using social engineering. It allowed him to get access to the large amounts of cloud computing power. It was later used for mining BTC, ETH and other cryptocurrencies.
Ho is a genius in a way. He tricked Amazon’s security system and made them to believe he is the president of Riot Games. For this purpose he made a fake driving license with Marc Merril’s name
The Department of Justice charged Ho almost a month ago. At the same time the victim’s identity was opened for the public only recently. At the moment the prosecutors charged Ho for numerous access device frauds and aggravated identity theft.
