Key Takeaways:
- Investigators have found more than $30 million worth of bitcoin that was taken from Axie Infinity’s Ronin network, according to Chainalysis.
- Approximately 10% of the money that was stolen from Axie Infinity was found in these seizures.
According to blockchain analysis company Chainalysis, law enforcement agencies and cryptocurrency organizations have recovered more than $30 million in bitcoin that was stolen by hackers with ties to North Korea in a number of discrete seizures over the previous few months.
According to Erin Plante, senior director of investigations at Chainalysis, “the seizures represent about 10% of the total funds stolen from Axie Infinity (accounting for price differences between time stolen and seized) and demonstrate that it is getting harder for bad actors to successfully cash out their ill-gotten crypto gains.”
The business claims that Chainalysis was successful in locating the funds, while the U.S. Treasury claims that the Lazarus hacker gang from North Korea took the funds, which were then cleaned up and transmitted to centralized exchanges.
The Lazarus Group stole the recovered money in March as part of a $620 million virtual currency theft from a blockchain project called Ronin Network that was connected to the online game Axie Infinity.
The news comes more than five months after a hack into a cryptocurrency led to the theft of $620 million from the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Ronin Network, with the attackers using the Ethereum-based cryptocurrency tumbler Tornado Cash to launder the vast bulk of the revenue, or $455 million.
According to Chainalysis Senior Director of Investigations Erin Plante, “This represents the first ever occasion that cryptocurrency stolen by a North Korean hacker gang has been seized, and we’re confident it won’t be the last.“
Erin Plante believes that detectives equipped with the appropriate resources can follow the money to comprehend and stop the money-laundering operations of a cybercrime group.
This is impossible through conventional financial channels because money laundering typically entails networks of front corporations and financial institutions operating in potentially antagonistic nations.
As per Chainalysis, cooperation between the public and private sectors and more openness surrounding bitcoin transactions can enable law enforcement to more effectively combat related unlawful money laundering activities.
