NiceHash Co-Founder, Wanted in the US, Arrested in Germany

The co-founder and former CTO of cryptocurrency mining marketplace NiceHash has been arrested by German federal police in connection with US charges of racketeering and fraud. 

According to the news website 24ur.com, Matjaz Škorjanc was arrested on Monday in Schwarzbach after crossing the German border in a car with Slovenian license plates. 

Slovenian national Škorjanc is wanted in the US on suspicion of being a member of a criminal organization that committed a number of cyber-frauds between 2008 and 2013. 

The US alleges that the 33-year-old set up and managed online password-protected hacking forum Darkode, in which cyber-criminals convened to buy, sell, trade, and share information, ideas, and tools to facilitate unlawful intrusions into others’ computers and electronic devices.

Darkode was shut down in 2015 as part of an internationally coordinated law enforcement effort called Operation Shrouded Horizon.

Škorjanc, who was known online as "iserdo" and "serdo," is further accused of creating and deploying the malicious botnet Mariposa, which harvested personal data from nearly a million computers around the world. Mariposa caused estimated damages of around $4 million after using cyber-scamming and denial-of-service (DOS) attacks to effectively turn infected computers into remotely controlled zombies. 

An indictment was filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia on December 4, 2018, against Škorjanc, fellow Slovene Mentor Leniqi, Spaniard Florence Carro Ruiz, and American Thomas McCor ..

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