A user hid malware in Steam games and scammed users out of nearly 200,000 euros. He was caught after ordering food online. The FBI traced these orders back to his home address.
Months ago, the FBI searched for potential victims in an investigation who downloaded games through Steam that were infected with malware.
US federal agents have since arrested a 21-year-old, accusing him of conspiracy to obtain information from a computer for private financial gain. He is alleged to have hidden malware in video games for years and scammed Steam users. This was reported by the English-speaking magazine TomsHardware.com.
Malware in 8 Steam games, his food orders revealed him
What did he do? The fraudster is said to have hidden malware in 8 Steam games and, in this way, infected about 8,000 devices, stealing at least 220,000 USD from around 80 cryptocurrency wallets between May 2024 and February 2026. This amounts to about 190,000 euros. Specifically, the games involved are:
- BlockBlasters
- Chemia
- Dashverse/DashFPS,
- Lampy
- Lunara
- PirateFi
- Tokenova
How was the fraudster found? Investigators uncovered the fraud by tracing stolen bitcoins to over 150 gift cards, most of which were issued at Uber Eats.
Payments from the fraud’s Bitcoin wallet went to Bitrefill, a gift card service where the over 150 cards were purchased, according to investigators. A subpoena to Uber allowed them to link the gift cards to an account from which deliveries went to two addresses that could be attributed to the fraudster.
The FBI then arrested the potential fraudster and was able to secure evidence in the form of cryptocurrency wallets. If convicted, the offender faces up to 10 years in prison.
Valve has removed a game that infected gaming PCs with malware. The responsible parties sent a message to affected users. However, according to user data, not many players are likely affected. You can read more about this directly on MeinMMO: A game on Steam infected gaming PCs with malware: Here’s what you can do if you were affected
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