Former US Secret Service Asst. Director: Keep personal info of FTX users private
Jeremy Sheridan, former assistant director of the United States Secret Service Office of Investigations, has warned that certain FTX customers could become targets if their personal information were to be made public.
In an April 20 declaration filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, Sheridan supported a motion from the debtors which would withhold “certain confidential information” of FTX users. According to Sheridan, currently a managing director for FTI Consulting, releasing the names of customers associated with the failed crypto exchange imposes “a severe and unusual risk of identity theft, asset theft, personal attack, and further online victimization.”
“If Individual Customer Names are made public in these Chapter 11 Cases, such information will provide potential malefactors an itemized list of vulnerable targets,” said Sheridan. “In particular, it will provide malefactors with a menu of potential targets via disclosure of the Debtors’ schedules of assets and liabilities list [...] And each of the Debtors’ customers’ respective cryptocurrency holdings.”
FTX users holding large amounts of crypto, according to Sheridan, would effectively have “a target on their back” and could be victims of fraud by scammers looking at their wallets. He cited examples of common online scams conducted through email and social media, including building fake business and romantic relationships, SIM swaps, and phishing attacks:
The legal team representing FTX debtors released a list of creditors owed money by the exchange in January. However, the roughly 10 million users’ names and personal information had been redacted. A group of media outlets including Bloomberg and The New York Times have objected to the
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