Joe Grand wasn't seeking fame: he just wanted to solve an apparently insurmountable technological challenge. But things didn't go as planned.
Joe Grand, better known by his hacker pseudonym 'King of Crime', was once a revered figure in the cybersecurity community. From his legendary involvement in Heavy Industries L0pht —the group of hackers that warned the US Senate they could 'take down the Internet in 30 minutes'— to his innovations, such as the first electronic badge from the DEFCON hacker conference, his career has been marked by curiosity and a desire to share knowledge.
But everything changed in 2022 when he recovered the equivalent of two million dollars from a cryptocurrency wallet believed to be inaccessible.
The Hack That Changed Everything
The story began with an email: a man named Dan wrote to Joe with a desperate request. He had lost access to his encrypted Trezor wallet after forgetting its password. Given the monetary value of its contents, the loss was devastating...
.... but things looked bad: Trezor wallets are designed with security systems that, after several failed attempts, automatically erase their contents.
For Joe, however, this represented an irresistible challenge: he learned advanced fault injection techniques —a way to electrically alter the behavior of a chip— and after months of meticulous work, he managed to access the wallet's data. He documented the process in a video posted on YouTube, which quickly went viral.
In a few days, millions of people saw this hardware hacker do the impossible. For most, it was an inspiring story. But for Joe, it was the beginning of an unexpected spiral of problems.
The Price of Fame: Imitations and Scams
The video brought with it an avalanche of unwanted attention. Within days, fake accounts began to appear. Joe is on Instagram, Twitter, Telegram, and other platforms: unscrupulous individuals started impersonating him, promising others to recover lost cryptocurrencies... in exchange for money.
"A guy wrote to me saying this. I had already paid to help him with the wallet, but I had no idea what he was talking about," recalls Joe in an interview. One of his own sons helped him find the fake account that had tricked the man. It was just one of many.
Since then, Joe has become the unwitting protagonist of a network of scams that use his name and image to deceive desperate victims. Scammers often respond to videos or posts related to cryptocurrencies, encouraging users to contact 'Joe Grand' —but using suspicious addresses like '[email protected]'— and promising them miraculous solutions.
Fight the scam... reluctantly
Joe Grand
"I am not very active on social media, but here are my official accounts. I hope this reduces the number of Joe Grand impersonators trying to scam people."
The problem with these scams revolved not only around the economic damage they caused to others but also Joe's own personal exhaustion: he, who was never a fan of social media, was forced to establish an official presence on all possible platforms. He had to enable direct messages, verify accounts, create secure communication channels, and even launch his own Discord, encouraged by his teenage son.
And even so, it's not enough. For every fake account he manages to close, several others emerge. For someone who doesn't own a satoshi —doesn't invest in cryptocurrencies and has no plans to— the experience left a bitter taste. "There are interesting things in blockchain technology, but the ecosystem is full of scams, shitcoins, and empty promises."