Teen suspected of holding $1.8 million in bitcoin from hacking Vegas casinos is out on bail — alleged perp could be tried as an adult, face possible prison time
The youth is accused of contributing to a Vegas Strip cyberattack that cost casinos over $115 million.

According to Vegas attorneys, a contributor to the closest thing you may see to Ocean's Eleven in your lifetime is about to get off easy. A 17-year-old accused of contributing to a 2023 cyberattack against multiple Las Vegas casinos has been released to his parents on bail, while prosecutors allege he is still holding $1.8 million in ransomed cryptocurrency they have yet been unable to locate.
Between August and October 2023, multiple casinos owned by MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment were hit in a massive cyberattack, attributed to Scattered Spider. The black-hat hacking collective made up primarily of English-speaking teens and young adults, cost the casinos over $100 million in damages and received a $15 million paid ransom from Caesars.
The suspect released this week surrendered himself to local police in Nevada last week, much to the shock of police and researchers. “I wasn’t previously aware of a local [resident] that assisted with that hack,” said cybersecurity researcher Allison Nixon in regards to the arrest. The choice of the young man to surrender himself came one day after a pair of arrests in the UK were made of other alleged Scattered Spider contributors.
Scattered Spider's "sophisticated network intrusions", as described by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, were done with the use of BlackCat ransomware, a subscription-based ransomware service written in the Rust programming language. BlackCat attacks typically rely on exposing confidential victim data exfiltrated with social engineering tactics, then threatening to spread the data and execute DDoS attacks on the victim's network.
The Clark County District Attorney's office accuses the Vegas teen of secretly holding $1.8 million in Bitcoin from the heist that has not yet been recovered. The office is also attempting to try the teen, who would have been 15 years old at the time of the attacks, as an adult for harsher sentencing and possible prison time.
A family court judge found in favor of the boy's defense, releasing him into the custody of his parents. The youth is not permitted to leave Clark County or live outside of his parents' registered address, and has had his Internet and cell phone usage significantly restricted to educational purposes only. The boy faces a small list of charges including extortion and conspiracy to commit extortion, but if prosecutors get their wish, he may face much harsher charges as well.
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Sunny Grimm is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has been building and breaking computers since 2017, serving as the resident youngster at Tom's. From APUs to RGB, Sunny has a handle on all the latest tech news.
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brncgreen If his handle is ZeroCool, I'd die. If anyone understands that reference,😏🙌🏽🙏🏽🙌🏽🙏🏽🫵🏽👌🏽Reply -
Armbrust11 He voluntarily surrendered... so prosecutors are seeking to try him as an adult for a harsher sentence? That doesn't make sense.Reply
He should get a plea deal and transition his skills to serve the government. -
bcommando Awww boohooo. The predators become the prey. Leave that kid alone and take it easy on him, casino's have stolen money from the most vulnerable regularly for the longest time and abused the system forever.Reply -
Tob702
HACK THE PLANET!!brncgreen said:If his handle is ZeroCool, I'd die. If anyone understands that reference,😏🙌🏽🙏🏽🙌🏽🙏🏽🫵🏽👌🏽 -
Tob702 Kid… whatever you do, do NOT give up that money. Jail time? Small price to pay if you’re a millionaire when you get out. Nobody makes a million by working anymore… and us programmers are about to become AI attendants…Reply -
Tob702
Yeah don’t you just love they’re talking about trying him as an adult…. Don’t talk to me about “Justice”. It’s the almighty dollar… period.bcommando said:Awww boohooo. The predators become the prey. Leave that kid alone and take it easy on him, casino's have stolen money from the most vulnerable regularly for the longest time and abused the system forever. -
Spyrica Of course he's out on bail. Do you understand the kind of money hackers make? Do you understand that they can just put fake numbers in their bank account and then send it off to the right people and that money now looks real? This kid is now hacking the hell out of people while he's on bail so he can do everything in his power to not get in as much trouble as possible. You cannot let hackers out on bail because they're going to touch technology and they're going to commit a crime again and they're going to be even harder to press charges on and to get in trouble because of all of the criminalining they have done while on Bail.Reply
Forgive me I had to make an account to make this comment here because my cyberstalker has been telling me all sorts of stuff about the hacking world because he thinks it's funny to scare me into thinking that he's going to get away with what he does because he has money... Even if he's told me multiple times over he just hacks Banks and puts numbers in accounts and that's not money... He doesn't have real money. He just has fake numbers in accounts.
The only reason why this teenager got caught is because he is a teenager and he's definitely not working alone, The people who he is working for or working with have let him get in trouble. I hope people keep this kid safe because hackers torture other hackers when they find out they exist, He may have committed a huge crime but he probably thought He was playing Grand theft Auto in his head or something and didn't actually realize the whole scope of what he was doing. Because imagine this. You press a few buttons on a computer and now you get a pop-up that says you just robbed the bank. Would you believe that? No you wouldn't, And if you did believe it and it was that easy to rob a bank, would you believe it was A bad thing to be doing? Because to that kid all of those buttons he pressed led to him robbing a casino that he isn't even able to go inside of personally. He doesn't know what that is.
This kid got exploited by a big hacking gang and they're letting him go down for it because someone was going to get caught somewhere doing something and they needed a scapegoat. That's why all of the hackers that you find out about are teenagers. Because the big hacking groups that are gathering up teenagers because they are grooming them to become criminals... Those hacking groups don't take the teenagers as serious members. They're just there to be used because the kids come to them with dollar signs in their eyes. Expecting a bunch of money really easy based upon all of the work that the hackers have done for them over the years... And they use them. They gave him the worst taska- Go to jail and see if maybe they'll let you correspond with them in the future.
My stalker is sending me texts saying that this kid is lucky that his gang is taking care of him. With any luck, this kid won't even exist anymore. By the time it's come to trial he will be a different person hiding somewhere.
Let's see how that goes. I'm curious. My cyberstalker doesn't usually directly say stuff about what I am looking at online. -
MrQew
I think you need to calm down with all the speculation and straight up wrong ideas you have about this instance. You seem very paranoid. If you read the article you can see they used ransomware software with a subscription meaning they didn't actually hack anyone, they paid for software, written by hackers, used by amateurs. This kid is doing nothing at home as most "hackers" are kids with premade scripts from malicious outfits.Spyrica said:Of course he's out on bail. Do you understand the kind of money hackers make? Do you understand that they can just put fake numbers in their bank account and then send it off to the right people and that money now looks real? This kid is now hacking the hell out of people while he's on bail so he can do everything in his power to not get in as much trouble as possible. You cannot let hackers out on bail because they're going to touch technology and they're going to commit a crime again and they're going to be even harder to press charges on and to get in trouble because of all of the criminalining they have done while on Bail.
Forgive me I had to make an account to make this comment here because my cyberstalker has been telling me all sorts of stuff about the hacking world because he thinks it's funny to scare me into thinking that he's going to get away with what he does because he has money... Even if he's told me multiple times over he just hacks Banks and puts numbers in accounts and that's not money... He doesn't have real money. He just has fake numbers in accounts.
The only reason why this teenager got caught is because he is a teenager and he's definitely not working alone, The people who he is working for or working with have let him get in trouble. I hope people keep this kid safe because hackers torture other hackers when they find out they exist, He may have committed a huge crime but he probably thought He was playing Grand theft Auto in his head or something and didn't actually realize the whole scope of what he was doing. Because imagine this. You press a few buttons on a computer and now you get a pop-up that says you just robbed the bank. Would you believe that? No you wouldn't, And if you did believe it and it was that easy to rob a bank, would you believe it was A bad thing to be doing? Because to that kid all of those buttons he pressed led to him robbing a casino that he isn't even able to go inside of personally. He doesn't know what that is.
This kid got exploited by a big hacking gang and they're letting him go down for it because someone was going to get caught somewhere doing something and they needed a scapegoat. That's why all of the hackers that you find out about are teenagers. Because the big hacking groups that are gathering up teenagers because they are grooming them to become criminals... Those hacking groups don't take the teenagers as serious members. They're just there to be used because the kids come to them with dollar signs in their eyes. Expecting a bunch of money really easy based upon all of the work that the hackers have done for them over the years... And they use them. They gave him the worst taska- Go to jail and see if maybe they'll let you correspond with them in the future.
My stalker is sending me texts saying that this kid is lucky that his gang is taking care of him. With any luck, this kid won't even exist anymore. By the time it's come to trial he will be a different person hiding somewhere.
Let's see how that goes. I'm curious. My cyberstalker doesn't usually directly say stuff about what I am looking at online.
And let's remember what ransomware really is, an unintelligent employee clicking a link and accepting an install. Every ransomware attack has to have an inept employee so something VERY unprofessional, install stuff on your work computer you don't know. Oh this email looks legit? Is how most ransomware happens. A foolish employee with low reasoning skills on a computer with far too much access, installs ransomware. It's literally not hacking, the kid is likely not a hacker at all. -
brncgreen
Well technically they could freeze his financial capabilities for not giving it up and 1.8mil now adays doesn't get you to far. Regardless it would make it real hard. Anything that involved him writing his name down would be sent through the system IRS notified then they would inquire on how he paid for said item being he has no money trial to his.namr and then they would seize the property and charge him with tax evasionTob702 said:Kid… whatever you do, do NOT give up that money. Jail time? Small price to pay if you’re a millionaire when you get out. Nobody makes a million by working anymore… and us programmers are about to become AI attendants… -
USAFRet
"cryptocurrency".brncgreen said:Well technically they could freeze his financial capabilities for not giving it up and 1.8mil now adays doesn't get you to far. Regardless it would make it real hard. Anything that involved him writing his name down would be sent through the system IRS notified then they would inquire on how he paid for said item being he has no money trial to his.namr and then they would seize the property and charge him with tax evasion
Its not even money yet.