is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.
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Federal authorities have arrested a Florida man suspected of stealing at least $220,000 in crypto through malware-infected Steam games, as reported earlier by local news outlet Local10. In the complaint, officials accuse 21-year-old Zyaire Wilkins and co-conspirators of launching eight malware-embedded games from around May 2024 to February 2026, allowing them to infect about 8,000 devices and gain access to 80 crypto wallets.
Though the complaint doesn’t specifically say the games were uploaded to Steam, it’s likely referring to the Valve-owned gaming platform. As noted by Local10, the FBI put out a call for victim information in a “Steam malware investigation” that includes the games listed in the lawsuit, including BlockBlasters, Chemia, Dashverse/DashFPS, Lampy, Lunara, PirateFi, and Tokenova.
Last year, several outlets also reported on Steam’s removal of some of these cryptostealing games, such as Blockblasters, which took more than $150,000 from victims, including a streamer raising funds for their cancer treatment. The lawsuit is also filed in a Washington court, where Valve is based. Valve didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The complaint alleges Wilkins and co-conspirators “marketed the malware-embedded video games on social media and messaging platforms, such as Discord, Telegram, X / Twitter, and LinkedIn, and encouraged others to download the games.” From there, authorities allege the conspirators used the malware to steal their victims’ private information and drain their crypto wallets.
Federal agents linked Wilkins to the case after obtaining his crypto wallet address in messages with an alleged co-conspirator. They traced the crypto address to an account on Bitrefill, a site where users can purchase gift cards with crypto. The account tied to Wilkins purchased more than 150 gift cards, including to Uber Eats, which authorities used to uncover his phone number, and eventually, an address.
Wilkins was arrested on July 14th and charged with conspiracy to obtain information by computer for private financial gain.
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