A total of 149 cases of illegal transfers of virtual currency from customer accounts were reported to police nationwide in 2017, the National Police Agency said Thursday. The collective amount stolen was about 662.4 million yen.
It was the first time that the NPA has compiled annual data on the illegal transfer of virtual currency.
The Metropolitan Police Department and other authorities are investigating these cases as suspected violations of the Law on Prohibition of Unauthorized Computer Access.
However, authorities have yet to identify suspects in any of the cases as multiple servers were often used to avoid being tracked.
According to data released by the NPA, bitcoin, Ripple and Ethereum were among the virtual currencies fraudulently transferred. Customers of 16 virtual currency exchange operators and three online wallet operators in Japan and abroad suffered damage in the cases.
Cyber-thieves often utilized sophisticated maneuvers, notably stealing customers' IDs and passwords before transferring virtual currency to online wallets they managed, the NPA said. It is possible that overseas cybercrime organizations were involved in the cases.
The account of one victim, a male company employee in his 40s living in Tokyo, was hacked last June.
About 2 million yen worth of virtual currency was illegally transferred from his account, which was operated through a virtual currency exchange.
The man received a confirmation email saying that a transaction had been completed, prompting him to submit an inquiry to the virtual currency exchange operator. He was told his password had been altered without his knowledge, and that the Ripple virtual currency in his account had been converted to bitcoin before being illegally transferred.
A number of fraud cases have also occurred this year.
In January, about 58 billion yen worth of NEM virtual currency was stolen from virtual currency operator Coincheck Inc. after it was hacked through the internet.
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Targeted email attacks on rise
In an increasing number of fraudulent virtual currency remittance cases, targeted emails containing viruses are used to steal customers' IDs and passwords.
According to the NPA, there were 6,027 reported cases of such targeted email attacks in 2017, up 1,981 from the previous year. It is the highest since the NPA began compiling such data in 2012. Experts are warning internet users about such attacks.
Such email attacks have been confirmed since around 2005 and have increased in recent years.
In these attacks, emails containing viruses are sent to public offices, companies and individuals, with the aim of stealing individual information from personal computers infected with the virus.
According to the NPA, there are many cases in which recipients have been tricked into opening the emails because they include specific company names and related words in the text and address.
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