US prosecutors have charged a 21-year-old Florida student, Zyaire Wilkins, with uploading fake video games containing malware to the Steam gaming platform in order to steal victims' personal data and cryptocurrency. The FBI arrested Wilkins on Tuesday, alleging that he and unnamed accomplices distributed the malicious games over the past two years, marketing them through Discord, LinkedIn and Telegram to make them appear legitimate. The case highlights an ongoing security problem for Steam, whose owner Valve has repeatedly had to remove malware-laden games from its platform.

According to the criminal complaint, the malware-infected games — including titles named BlockBlasters, Dashverse, Lampy, Lunara and PirateFi — infected roughly 8,000 victims and were used to hack around 80 crypto wallets, stealing at least $220,000. Investigators traced the scheme after identifying a co-conspirator, following crypto payments to gift card purchases, and subpoenaing Uber records that linked deliveries to Wilkins, who used the online alias "Sibel.eth". Agents subsequently searched his home and seized his laptop, phones and digital wallets, though Wilkins declined to answer questions.