The team management alerted the counselors about the extortion attempt and asked that the e-mail not be opened.
Palmeiras board members received an extortion e-mail last Wednesday (23rd), the message contains a request for payment in bitcoins so that information from the club is not exposed.
„Shall we negotiate so that I do not expose confidential data of the club? yes or no. I want answers still today“ says the e-mail.
According to the Interactive Sports site, 285 club counselors have received the e-mail which demands $ 1,050 each in order that confidential information of the team are not leaked. The e-mail asks that the payment be made in Bitcoin, the supposed hacker identified as Edward Lorenz even teaches the recipients to buy the digital currency.
In the message there was a list of all the club’s advisors and a title of „Balances and documents of the Palmeiras“. The team management alerted the counselors about the extortion attempt and asked that the e-mail was not opened. In addition, the team asked that no one make the payment.
The club’s board also called the police to investigate the case.
Palmeiras did not pay the ransom, while other victims…
Analyzing blockchain data it is possible to see that in fact the address has not received any value in the last days, however, the same address is related to other scams on the internet, having already received R$ 96,481 in all its existence.
Therefore, the owner of the address is already used to demand payments in Bitcoin.
The curious thing here is that the address is identified in hackers forums as „Scammer“, that is, „scammer“, he is cited as „fake hacker services“. That is, whoever is behind the address may just be a scammer who pretends to be a hacker and lives off selling fake hacker services and trying to extort victims by saying he has personal data on them.
The address is also linked to paedophilia forums on Dark Web, according to Livecoins‘ findings.
Edward.Lorenz, the sender of the email, has a website selling hacker services on Dark Web. On his website he presents himself as a „20 year old computer specialist“, with knowledge of hacking e-mails, Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook and other social networks.
The hacker even sells a service called „destroy someone’s life,“ which he promises with a $899 payment he will turn the victim’s life into chaos.
It is important to remember, however, that many scammers claim to sell a social network invasion service but it is all a scam.
Palmeiras, therefore, may have been the victim of an e-mail invasion, and now the hacker has access to several messages and documents exchanged by the club. Or, most likely the club was not a victim of a data leak, and is only being tested by some random scammer.
In 2019 the same hacker demanded payment of R$ 1 million not to leak data from the São Paulo team, however, even without the payment no data was leaked.
If all 285 Palmeiras board members decided to pay the supposed hacker’s demands, the total sum would be R$ 299,250.
