Gate News message: Korean police recently disclosed that some criminal groups use the crypto stablecoin USDT to provide customers with retaliatory attack services. These criminals claim that as long as they pay USDT, they can “carry out any form of revenge,” including damaging door frames, dumping food remnants in apartment building stairwells, or distributing defamatory flyers. Victims do not need to act themselves; intermediaries and part-time enforcers operate via encrypted communication platforms such as Telegram, ensuring anonymity.
Professor Oh Yoon-seong of the Department of Police Administration at Suncheon-eup University said that cryptocurrencies and anonymous communication tools provide the perfect means for avengers, greatly increasing the difficulty for police to track them. The Gyeonggi Province Police said that this year alone, at least six crypto revenge cases have already occurred, and the masterminds are still being pursued. Some group members used subcontracted work opportunities with local food-delivery platforms to steal personal information on more than 1,000 potential victims, thereby planning the attacks.
Police emphasized that although some public Telegram channels themed around revenge have been shut down, “dozens of proxy channels” still appear every day, and the criminal patterns are highly fragmented. Publicly available information shows that some Korean-language posts explicitly offer “custom revenge services,” and even suggest that if cryptocurrency is paid, the attack could be delayed. Some chatroom users were also hired to post spam and pornographic videos in order to force the platform to close specific channels, and they requested payment.
Experts warn that with the widespread adoption of Web3 technology and cryptocurrencies, these illegal revenge services that use USDT as a payment method may continue to spread. Users and businesses need to strengthen cybersecurity awareness, prevent personal information leaks, and be alert to illegal transactions and threats on anonymous platforms.
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