Federal Agents Arrest Florida Man in Crypto-Stealing Malware Scheme

Federal agents have arrested a Florida man they say helped run a scheme that smuggled crypto-stealing malware into video games, infecting thousands of devices and draining hundreds of thousands of dollars from victims' wallets.

Zyaire Dontaevious Zamarion Wilkins, 21, of North Lauderdale, was arrested Tuesday and charged with conspiracy to obtain information by computer for private financial gain—a count that carries up to a decade in prison—according to a 15-page federal complaint first reported by WPLG Local 10.

The complaint doesn't name the platform, referring only to a "popular digital distribution software company." But the games it lists—including PirateFi, BlockBlasters, Dashverse and Lunara—are among those flagged by the FBI's Seattle field office in a public Steam malware investigation earlier this year. The case is being prosecuted in Seattle, near the Bellevue, Washington headquarters of Steam owner Valve.

Games as bait

Between May 2024 and February 2026, Wilkins and others launched eight malware-laced games and infected the devices of some 8,000 people, the FBI said, gaining access to about 80 crypto wallets and stealing at least $220,000. The group allegedly marketed the titles across Discord, Telegram, X and LinkedIn, and used bots to single out users with large crypto holdings before nudging them to download. Once a game was installed, agents said that the malware harvested private data and login credentials, which the conspirators combed for anything that could unlock a victim's crypto accounts.

Investigators tied Wilkins to the handle "Sibel.eth," which they say he used to coordinate with an unidentified "primary developer" over the encrypted app Signal—where, according to the complaint, the two discussed running "draining campaigns" and tricking victims into approving transactions that instantly emptied their wallets. Wilkins bought a "remote access trojan" for $10,000, agents said.

They unmasked him, the complaint says, by following Bitcoin from the scheme's wallet to Bitrefill, where it was spent on more than 150 gift cards—mostly for Uber Eats. A subpoena to Uber linked those cards to an account with deliveries to Wilkins' home and to his University of West Florida addresses.

When agents searched his North Lauderdale home the previous week, Wilkins refused to speak with them, they said. They seized several devices and three wallet seed phrases—one for Monero, a privacy coin the agent described as "frequently used by criminals" because it is hard to trace. A review of his crypto history showed roughly $382,000 moving in and out.

Raising Steam

The arrest appears to be the first charge linked to an investigation the FBI went public with in March, when it asked gamers hit by a run of malicious Steam titles to come forward. The games were approved for sale and looked legitimate, but installed info-stealers that scraped credentials and wallet data. PirateFi drew some 7,000 players while posing as a free survival game before Valve pulled it and urged users to reformat their computers.

The most notorious of the bunch, BlockBlasters, drained more than $32,000 from a streamer raising money for cancer treatment live on air last September—part of an estimated $150,000 taken from hundreds of users. Just last month, researchers flagged malware tucked into Steam Workshop wallpapers aimed at the same crypto-holding crowd.

Wilkins was due in federal court in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday, with no timeline set for his transfer to Washington to face the charge, which carries up to 10 years in prison.