A United States woman was recorded mocking her victims over a phone call, right after she completely drained their crypto wallets. The woman’s name is Tiffany Milanovich, and her identity along with her criminal activities has just been exposed by on-chain investigator ZachXBT to his 1.08 million followers.
According to ZachXBT’s disclosure, Milanovich is a cyber threat actor linked to a series of crypto thefts. The tracked losses from her activities amount to at least $5 million. Instead of hiding the trail of the stolen money, the perpetrator brazenly showed off on social media while spending it on various high-end lifestyle luxury goods.
This exposure thread has become one of the most viral disclosures this week on platform X. ZachXBT’s tweet gathered 10,124 likes and was reposted 947 times. Public attention was drawn not only because of the losses incurred, but also due to the perpetrator’s method of deceiving victims, which hits close to home for daily crypto users.
Exploiting User Panic
Milanovich’s strategy to rake in millions of dollars did not rely on smart contract hacking skills or network code exploits at all. She purely exploited psychological vulnerabilities and panic through customer support impersonation scams.
Her primary targets were users of centralized crypto exchanges and owners of popular hardware wallets such as Ledger and Trezor. Victims were typically contacted via fake emails designed to look as close as possible to official releases, or through sudden incoming phone calls. The caller would claim to be a member of the technical support team, then pressure the victim with a narrative that there was a sudden security breach on their account.
This phishing attack via customer support impersonation is deadly because it directly targets human error rather than systems. Cybercriminals do not need to struggle to find vulnerabilities in blockchain defense protocols when they can manipulate the human at the other end of the line to surrender their own access keys.
Phone Numbers as Ammunition
Milanovich’s criminal footprint is linked to a much broader trend of theft. Attacks that exploit users as a blind spot are increasingly proving to be one of the most effective and lucrative vectors of exploitation today.
Recently, cybersecurity firm Rapid7 released a report on a similar scam campaign codenamed Operation Asterix. In that operation, a syndicate of perpetrators successfully amassed a database containing 885,000 active phone numbers. Hundreds of thousands of these numbers were collected specifically to be targeted in phishing campaigns that also masqueraded as crypto wallet customer support staff.
As databases continue to circulate and social engineering techniques used by perpetrators become increasingly convincing, multi-layered security systems can no longer guarantee safety. Asset security now shifts to a single last line of defense in the user’s hands. The moment a voice at the other end of the line asks for personal data under the guise of technical assistance, that is where the door to robbery is officially opened. Reported from @zachxbt on X.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only, not financial advice. Cryptocurrency assets are highly volatile and carry significant risk. Always do your own research (DYOR) and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
