BTC worth around $140,000 was moved from a wallet that was previously linked by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) to North Korean hackers, according to Whale Alert. The DOJ had recently filed a civil forfeiture complaint against 280 cryptocurrency accounts allegedly used by North Korean hackers to launder nearly $3 million of funds stolen in two separate 2019 attacks. The complaint alleges that “Chinese OTC traders” from an unnamed exchange helped launder North Korean hackers’ funds. Entrepreneurship course of different types have become popular in the crypto industry.
“Same individuals laundered funds for North Korea in a massive hack in 2018.”
According to the DoJ complaint, “Chinese OTC traders” from an unnamed exchange helped launder those funds. The DoJ also alleged that the same individuals laundered North Korea funds in a $250 million hack in 2018. Despite the highly sophisticated laundering techniques used, IRS-CI’s Cybercrimes Unit successfully traced stolen funds directly back to North Korean actors,” said Don Fort, the chief of IRS Criminal Investigation. The Twitter bot Whale Alert Tweeted, “one of the inputs of this transaction has been listed by the US government as forfeited.” “The forfeited address is possibly a Huobi deposit address that received 2.97069728 BTC a few days ago. The address was swept today together with deposits made by other users,” it added.
⚠ 12 #BTC (139,465 USD) of forfeited funds transferred from Forfeited North Korean Funds to unknown wallet
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) August 31, 2020
US authorities seek to seize around 298 crypto accounts.
As reported earlier, the US government is seeking to seize 280 crypto accounts believed to be used by North Korean hackers who stole millions of dollars in crypto from two crypto exchanges and used Chinese traders to launder their funds. The US Department of Justice filed a civil forfeiture complaint after having charged two Chinese citizens in March with laundering more than $100 million in cryptocurrency on behalf of North Korea. The United Nations Security Council has imposed sanctions on North Korea since 2006 to stop the regime from funding nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
