Payment Processor EgoPay Confirms Hack, Insider Suspected

UPDATE: 23rd January, 14:20 GMT: EgoPay's former CEO Tadas Kasputis has told CoinDesk that the company's bitcoin-related customers lost $1.1m in the hack.

Third-party payment processor EgoPay suffered a hack in late December, the company has confirmed in a blog post.

The post

claims the person or persons involved interfered with a number of transactions.

Explaining more about the hack, EgoPay writes: "False values were made available in the merchants platform, when no actual value was transmitted in EgoPay. This hacker then proceeded to convert this fake value into irreversible currencies all within a one-hour window. These merchants believed that this value was in their EgoPay account, but unfortunately it was not."

After discovering the issue, the company halted all automatic transaction processing, with payments being actioned manually instead.

Staff suspensions

A number of staff members were then suspended as it was concluded that someone from within the company had perpetrated the hack.

The post cites this as the reason the company's support service has been non-existent over recent weeks:

"Rightfully, people are upset at us. We failed to communicate. We failed our membership base. We take full responsibility on this."

Tadas Kasputis has stepped down as CEO, but it is not clear whether he has taken on another role within the company or not.

The post explains that firm is now in the process of hiring new staff members and striving to make good its obligations to its clients and partners.

Still no communication

While the company has apologised for its handling of the recent situation, it still has not replied to all clients.

A member of bitcoin and litecoin exchange BTC-e, known only as 'Alex' said the company has not been in touch since before Christmas.

Last week, Alex told CoinDesk that EgoPay had frozen $80,000 of BTC-e's funds, while payment solutions company Payeer showed evidence that it had $185,503.32 and €5,460.75 in a frozen wallet with the company.

Both BTC-e and Payeer confirmed their funds are still frozen at press time.

Allegations

The EgoPay post goes on to make serious allegations about the company's owner, Amir Aziz, although they are, at this stage, unverified.

CoinDesk has contacted Kasputis and Aziz for comment, but neither had replied by press time.

Updates will follow as more information on this story is uncovered.

Computer image via Shutterstock.