A user hid malware in Steam games and scammed users out of nearly 200,000 euros. He was caught after ordering food online, as the FBI was able to trace these orders back to his home address.
Several months ago, the FBI searched for potential victims who had downloaded games on Steam that were embedded with malware.
Federal officials in the U.S. have now arrested a 21-year-old man, 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, stealing from Steam users. This was reported by the English-language magazine TomsHardware.com.
Malware in 8 Steam games, his food orders lead to his capture
What did he do? The scammer is accused of hiding malware in 8 Steam games, infecting around 8,000 devices and stealing at least $220,000 from about 80 cryptocurrency wallets between May 2024 and February 2026. Converted, this is about 190,000 euros. The games involved are said to be:
- BlockBlasters
- Chemia
- Dashverse/DashFPS,
- Lampy
- Lunara
- PirateFi
- Tokenova
How was the scammer caught? Investigators were able to uncover the fraud by tracing stolen bitcoins to more than 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, the investigators stated. A subpoena to Uber allowed linking the gift cards to an account from which deliveries went to two addresses that could be associated with the scammer.
Here, the FBI then arrested the potential scammer and was able to secure evidence in the form of cryptocurrency wallets. If convicted, the perpetrator faces up to 10 years in prison.
Valve deleted a game that infected gaming PCs with malware. The responsible parties sent a message to affected users. According to user data, however, not many players are likely to be affected. More details can be found directly on MeinMMO: A game on Steam has infected gaming PCs with malware: Here’s what you can do if you were affected
Your opinion is important to us!
Do you like the article? Then let us know!