How Binance played a key role in arresting ZKasino fraud suspect

The on-chain investigative team behind Binance played a major role in leading law enforcement to arrest a suspected casino fraudster.

The widespread community outrage initially prompted Binance's Crime Compliance (FCC) and investigative team to question the fraudulent gambling platform.

The researchers used on-chain monitoring and open source intelligence (OSINT) techniques to find the attacker, the Binance Investigations Team exclusively told Cointelegraph:

“We looked at all the smart contracts for ZKasino in a behavioral network study to find out who is behind the contract but also who are the signatories of these addresses.”

After revealing the suspect behind the smart contracts, Binance alerted law enforcement to the identity of the account owner who committed the fraud.

That led the Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation Service (FIOD) to arrest the 26-year-old suspect on April 29 and seize more than 11.4 million euros ($12.2 million) worth of crypto, real estate and luxury cars, according to a May 3 report. FIOD

This marks the first arrest in the ZKasino fraud case, where investors lost at least $33 million in digital assets. The platform initially promised users a return on their investment within 30 days. However, according to the Dutch authorities, the smart contract platform never intended to return the money.

Binance successfully blocked millions of dollars worth of crypto via ZKasino's carpet drag after law enforcement issued a warrant against the attacker's account. Binance's investigation team said:

Together with law enforcement, we have obtained the account of one of the suspects. As soon as they send us a garnishment order, we can take action on that… so they can get their money back. But the main part of this ZKasino issue is still at large.

Binance's investigation team further assisted the Dutch authorities with on-chain forensics, identifying the flow of funds and understanding the manner in which the malicious ZKasino smart contracts were set up.

Also known as the withdrawal scam, Zcasino's carpet pool attracted more than 10,000 investors with at least 10,515 Ether (ETH) before the smart contract operator began quietly withdrawing user funds.

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The crypto community played a big role in ZKasino's arrest.

Binance's investigative team has revealed that the community played a major role in arresting the suspect, Zcasino, and exposing his identity.

Crypto investors, including popular crypto analyst Fatman, have suspected that the fraudulent ZKasino builder is a derivative monkey name, which Binance has confirmed to Cointelegraph.

Some of the suspect's previous comments on X greatly helped the community identify the scammer, according to Binance's investigation team:

Some of the comments this guy made on Twitter with his moniker are a little weird in retrospect. [expressing] His desire to serve a prison term of one to two years just for the experience.

Despite the arrests, the funds continued to move through the chain, suggesting that several other attackers were involved in the racketeering.

Binance's Investigations team will continue to work closely with the authorities to ensure that the stolen funds are returned to investors.

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