A fraudster who drained hundreds of thousands of dollars from an elderly victim’s account is now staring at the possibility of spending decades behind bars.

Cuban national Michel Duarte Suarez has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and mail fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft after stealing about $803,000 from his victim’s bank account over a four-month period.

Court documents show that Suarez told a confidential informant in March 2022 that he had access to the account of an 82-year-old victim.

While living in Panama at the time, the scammer wrote and sent checks to South Florida with instructions to his co-conspirators to encash the checks and wire 50% of the funds to Suarez’s Miami-based firm, Online Electronics. Authorities say that Suarez forged the checks to resemble the signature of the victim displayed on their signature card for the same bank account.

Suarez was arrested in January 2025 in Panama and was extradited to South Florida to face the charges. For his crimes, he could spend 30 years behind bars plus a mandatory consecutive two-year sentence to any imprisonment term handed down by a judge.

The fraudster is slated for sentencing on September 29th, 2025, in Miami before United States District Court Judge Kathleen M. Williams.

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A crypto hacker who stole tens of millions of dollars from the decentralized crypto perpetuals exchange GMX (GMX) is turning white hat by returning the stolen funds to collect a bounty.

In a new thread on the social media platform X, GMX says the hacker who stole $42 million worth of crypto assets earlier this week from its Arbitrum (ARB)-based liquidity pool is returning the funds and collecting a $5 million reward.

“A potential exploitable amount of $42 million belonging to GLP holders was secured. After payment of a $5 million bounty to the user, the remaining funds are now safely in the GMX Security Multisig.

Contributors are working on a proposed distribution plan for presentation to the GMX DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) and will share more information shortly.”

According to previous reports, the hacker struck on July 9th and transferred part of the funds to an unknown wallet. At the time, GMX said the exploit was limited to GMXV1 and that V2, its markets and liquidity pools, as well as the ecosystem’s native asset, were unaffected.

In its report on the incident, GMX says the exploit was a re-entrancy attack, or a type of hack that affects smart contracts by taking advantage of a vulnerability presented when a smart contract makes a call to another before updating itself, leaving open the possibility for an external malicious contract to enter in.

News of the returned fund sent GMX skyrocketing, as the digital asset is trading for $13.36 at time of writing, an 18.4% increase during the last 24 hours.

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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any losses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.

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Customers at JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo say the banks have refused to reimburse after bad actors ripped cash from their accounts.

A Wells Fargo customer for nearly four decades says the lender refused to make him whole after scammers drained $20,000 from his account.

Scott Merovitch says he received a call from someone claiming to work at the bank, warning his account was flashing suspicious activity, reports FOX 26 Houston.

According to Merovitch, the caller was able to provide information about his recent transactions.

After the call, a woman pretending to work at Wells Fargo showed up at Merovitch’s front door, asked for his card and cut it into pieces.

Two hours later, Merovitch says $20,000 exited his account at ATM locations just a few miles from his residence.

When he filed for a reimbursement claim, Merovitch says the lender issued a letter telling him that the transactions were made by him or someone who had his permission.

Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase is refusing to reimburse a man scammed by a fake Apple support text, reports the CBS-affiliated news station KOLD.

The phishing text, posing as Apple’s billing department, claimed unauthorized activity was underway.

The victim says he quickly called the number, and the scammer likely installed malware on his iPhone to tap into his bank account.

Chase says reimbursement is not happening.

“After further review, our claim denial stands as we found these transactions were authorized by the customer with no evidence of fraudulent account takeover or of a compromised device.”

Lastly, Bank of America refused to reimburse a customer who lost $450 to a taxi scam in Panama.

Keith Lee says he was charged $450 for a $10 cab ride, according to the Elliott Report.

The driver claimed Lee’s card didn’t process, so he paid cash.

Bank of America denied his dispute, saying a chip-verified “card-present” transaction was executed.

Consumer advocate Christopher Elliott then stepped in, contacting BofA on Lee’s behalf.

After hearing from Elliott, Bank of America finally reversed the charge. Elliott says the bank acknowledged such taxi scams are well-known.

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The banking giant Wells Fargo is reportedly refusing to reimburse a disabled customer who lost thousands of dollars to scammers who impersonated bank employees.

52-year-old Paul Schendel, a diabetic man who was disabled due to a back injury, lost $6,805 to scammers posing as Wells Fargo employees, reports the local news station FOX 26.

Schendel received a phone call one day from a number that showed up as Wells Fargo on the caller ID. The caller, who had specific knowledge of his banking details, told him that fraudulent activity had been detected on his Wells Fargo account.

Later that day, a woman came to his door, cut up his bank card and took the pieces with her, including the chip. The woman even told Schendel that he should go to the bank the next day to get a new card.

But when Schendel went to Wells Fargo, he was informed that the bank would never conduct such activities or ever call customers, and that the funds in his account would likely never be recovered.

Schendel eventually got a letter from Wells Fargo confirming that the bank would not reimburse his losses.

Says Wells Fargo,

“We have completed our research of your inquiry about the charges of $6,805 on your account… Based on the information available to us, and because the transactions were made using your card and Personal Identification Number (PIN), we found it was made by you or someone who had your permission. Please consider your claim closed.”

FOX26 says it reached out to Wells Fargo to learn about Schendel’s case, but has not yet received any word from the banking giant.

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A woman in Pennsylvania is accused of abusing family ties to steal large sums of cash from her mother’s PNC bank account for personal use.

Grove City Police just arrested 55-year-old Lynn Dewey following a bank fraud investigation, reports 21 WFMJ.

According to the criminal complaint, the senior care provider Quality Life Services contacted authorities after Dewey’s 80-year-old mother, who is unable to care for herself and make financial decisions, lost a substantial amount in her bank account.

The facility’s administrators say that the bank statements from December 2023 to present show that Dewey, who had access to the account, transferred funds using the peer-to-peer money transfer service Cash App.

They also say that the mother has over $16,000 in patient liability, with no payments made since January. Medicaid likewise denied medical assistance due to the old woman’s reported income.

The police say that the suspect admitted using Cash App to move money from the PNC bank account and used the funds to purchase groceries and gas, pay personal credit card bills and send money to relatives.

Dewey says she used $41,671.78 for personal expenses. She is now facing charges for financial exploitation of an older adult and theft.

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Bank of America is reportedly refusing to reimburse a customer whose account was drained of thousands of dollars after thieves stole his unlocked phone.

BofA customer Brandon Wilson was leaving a bar in Chicago on Labor Day in September of 2024 when he was accosted by thugs, reports ABC 7 Chicago.

“As I was waiting for my Uber outside, a group of people surrounded me. They threatened me. They asked me to empty my wallet, to give them my phone, to unlock my phone… I was beyond terrified. I followed what they said, because I thought I was going to have my life taken from me.”

After getting home and finding $4,446 had been transferred out of his Bank of America account via multiple Zelle transactions, Wilson called the trillion-dollar lender and reported the fraudulent activity. Bank of America temporarily credited his account and Wilson assumed that would be the end of it.

“At that point I thought I was good.”

The week after, however, Bank of America sent Wilson a letter claiming he had authorized or permitted the transactions.

“Brandon, we’re unable to approve your recent claim. The charge was authorized by you or made by someone who has permission to use the card or account.”

Wilson, who has been with Bank of America since he was 14, submitted another fraud claim but the trillion-dollar lender again rejected his claim.

After ABC 7 Chicago reached out to Bank of America, a spokesperson for second-largest bank in the US after JPMorgan Chase said the case would be reviewed. Wilson is now hoping Bank of America will reimburse him.

“It’s clear as day that I didn’t make these charges.”

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A hot potato: Bybit, a Dubai-based crypto exchange, announced on Friday that hackers had stolen a staggering $1.5 billion worth of digital assets, making it the largest crypto heist in history. The attackers exploited security vulnerabilities during a transaction, allowing them to transfer a significant amount of Ethereum.

The hackers stole the crypto from Bybit’s cold wallet, an offline storage system that’s supposed to be highly secure. Around 400,000 ETH were swiped in all, reportedly representing over 70% of its ETH reserves. Ethereum is currently the second-largest crypto after Bitcoin.

Not long after, Bybit CEO Ben Zhou took to X to reassure users that their funds were safe and that the exchange would be reimbursing anyone impacted by the breach. He added that while Bybit holds around $20 billion in client assets, it would cover any unrecovered funds through its own treasury or by taking out loans from partners.

Bybit ETH multisig cold wallet just made a transfer to our warm wallet about 1 hr ago. It appears that this specific transaction was musked, all the signers saw the musked UI which showed the correct address and the URL was from @safe . However the signing message was to change…

– Ben Zhou (@benbybit) February 21, 2025

This heist blows previous crypto crimes out of the water. It dwarfs other massive hacks like the $620 million Ronin Network job in 2022 and the $611 million swiped from Poly Network in 2021.

Some blockchain analysis firms like Elliptic and Arkham Intelligence traced the stolen crypto as it was rapidly scattered across different wallets and cashed out on various platforms. They eventually linked it to the infamous Lazarus Group, a North Korean state-sponsored crew. These devious hackers have a long track record of plundering the crypto world to fund the regime’s wealthy elite. As of 2022, they were estimated to have looted over $1 billion worth of crypto across multiple hacks and scams.

In response to the Bybit breach, Tom Robinson from Elliptic said in an email to CNBC that they’ve flagged the thief’s wallet addresses in their software to try to prevent the funds from being laundered through other exchanges.

The Bybit hack also sparked a frenzy of customer withdrawals as users feared potential insolvency. The company assured customers that withdrawals were proceeding as expected, with Zhou later adding that outflows had stabilized. He also stated that the company remains solvent even if the losses from the hack are not recovered and that all client assets are “1 to 1 backed.”

A recent blog post also reassures users that Bybit’s platform and all other services, including trading products, cards, and P2P, remain “fully operational.”

Banking giant JPMorgan Chase is reportedly denying a customer’s massive reimbursement claim.

Single mother Marisel Ballard says she lost $80,000 from her JPMorgan business account after thieves hacked into her social media setup, reports FOX San Antonio.

Ballard, who owns the Trustworthy Cleaning Service in Texas, says she linked her bank account to Facebook to run ads for her cleaning and maid service company.

She says the thieves cracked her Facebook account and gained access to her payment information, making unauthorized withdrawals totaling nearly $80,000 over the course of a few days.

Ballard says neither Facebook nor JPMorgan issued a warning about the suspicious activity on her accounts.

When the money was drained, Ballard thought JPMorgan would cover her losses.

But after months of waiting, Ballard says JPMorgan told her that she’s not getting any of her money back.

“We denied our customer’s claims because she was not able to provide us with any evidence these transactions were unauthorized.” 

Ballard says she feels Chase let her down.

“Yes a lot, thinking you’ve been a loyal client for more than 15 years, like that no, it was not fair.”

While waiting for JPMorgan to issue a final decision on her claim, Ballard says she had to take out a loan to cover her payroll. Trustworthy Cleaning Service has about 30 employees.

FOX asked Facebook for a comment on Ballard’s case, but the social media giant has not yet responded.

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