{"product_id":"the-crypto-killers-fraud-deception-and-death-in-the-age-of-digital-money-9798250315869","title":"The Crypto Killers: Fraud, Deception, and Death in the Age of Digital Money","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): James Pennington\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: Organized Crime\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe money was real. The blockchain was permanent. And the people who stole billions were hiding in plain sight.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 2016, a Bulgarian woman in a sequined gown stood before eleven thousand cheering investors at Wembley Arena and told them she had built the future of money. She raised $4.5 billion. Her coin had no blockchain. She has never been found.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 2022, a thirty-year-old MIT graduate in shorts and a beanbag chair collapsed the world's third-largest cryptocurrency exchange overnight, leaving over a million customers unable to access their funds. He is serving twenty-five years in federal prison.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 2024, North Korea's state-sponsored hacking division stole $1.34 billion in a single year - funding a nuclear weapons program with money taken from ordinary investors in Japan, India, and the United States.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThese are not isolated incidents. They are the defining crimes of the digital money age.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThe Crypto Killers\u003c\/i\u003e, investigative author Dr. James Pennington goes inside the biggest frauds, heists, and human tragedies that cryptocurrency has produced - tracing the money, the people, and the systems that made each crime possible, and asking what it all reveals about the technology that was supposed to change everything.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom the pig butchering compounds of Cambodia and Myanmar - where 220,000 trafficked workers send love messages at gunpoint to lonely Americans - to the French countryside where the co-founder of the world's largest hardware wallet manufacturer lost a finger in a kidnapping designed to extract his Bitcoin, Pennington documents a criminal landscape that is simultaneously more sophisticated and more human than any headline has captured.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eInside, you'll discover: \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe full story of OneCoin - how Ruja Ignatova built a $4.5 billion ghost coin, who warned her the FBI was coming, and what the competing theories about her fate actually say\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe mechanics of the FTX fraud - the hidden code that gave Alameda Research unlimited access to customer funds, the seven false balance sheets, the $150 million bribe to Chinese officials, and what Caroline Ellison said about Sam Bankman-Fried's hair\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe pig butchering industry - how it grew 85-fold in four years, the industrial compounds where workers are tortured into sending romance messages, and the lonely Americans who lost everything to a wrong-number text\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNorth Korea's Lazarus Group - the $1.5 billion Bybit hack, the fake LinkedIn recruiter who brought down a Japanese exchange, and how Kim Jong Un funds his nuclear program with stolen cryptocurrency\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe $5 wrench attack - why physical violence against cryptocurrency holders has tripled since 2022, and what the kidnappers in Vienna, SoHo, and Toronto reveal about the fundamental vulnerability of self-custody wealth\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe Africrypt brothers - two South African siblings, aged 18 and 21, who allegedly vanished with $3.6 billion and returned, years later, to a gated estate as though nothing had happened\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe blockchain forensics revolution - how ZachXBT, Chainalysis, and the IRS Cyber Unit are building the tools to follow money that criminals believe they have made unfollowable\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cp\u003ePenny for penny, victim for victim, \u003ci\u003eThe Crypto Killers\u003c\/i\u003e is the definitive account of the decade of digital fraud - a book about technology that is, ultimately, about the oldest question in the history of money: who do you trust, and why?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eDr. James Pennington\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Gardner Heist\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Villisca Axe Murders\u003c\/i\u003e. He writes about financial crime, unsolved cases, and the intersection of technology and human behavior.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Independently Published","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":47776332087447,"sku":"9798250315869","price":1703.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9798250315869.webp?v=1777995615","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/the-crypto-killers-fraud-deception-and-death-in-the-age-of-digital-money-9798250315869","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}