The Mogilevich group that reportedly hacked Epic Games has confessed that it is in fact not hackers.

In a statement to Cyber Daily, a spokesperson for the organisation – going by the name Pongo – has admitted that the outfit isn't a ransomware gang, but is run by scammers. When it claimed to have hacked Epic Games and made off with 186GB of data from the Fortnite giant, this was in fact a con designed to fool other hackers.

Mogilevich claims to have sold fake ransomware software to eight people.

“Unfortunately this link led you to an important announcement of our business instead of evidence of a breached database,” the organisation's spokesperson said.

“You may be wondering why all this, and now I’m going to explain everything you need. In reality, we are not a ransomware-as-a-service, but professional fraudsters.

“None of the databases listed in our blog were as true as you might have discovered recently. We took advantage of big names to gain visibility as quickly as possible, but not to fame [sic] and receive approval, but to build meticulously our new trafficking of victims to scam.”

Epic previously denied that it had been the victim of a hack.