Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao claimed the Lazarus-laundered Ethereum transferred onto Huobi and Binance has now been frozen and seized.
North Korea-linked cybercrime syndicate Lazarus Group has reportedly transferred $63.4 million in Ethereum from 2022’s mammoth Harmony bridge hack, depositing it on Binance, Huobi, and OKX.
According to on-chain sleuth ZachXBT, the group used the privacy and anonymity system Railgun before consolidating the funds and depositing them on the exchanges.
Railgun is an Ethereum-based smart contract system that lets users obscure the nature of their crypto transactions, removing identifying information.
The sleuth claimed that the transfers, made on January 13, involved 350,000 separate wallet addresses.
Popular NFT thought leader NFT God claims to have lost a “life-changing amount” of NFTs. On January 14th, the influencer announced that his entire digital livelihood was “hacked and used to hurt others”. NFT God is the latest victim of crypto scammers. The frauds also sent out malicious emails to around 16,000 of his closest followers. Learn more about the incident below.
NFT God claims that a sponsored advertisement link led to this hack. This specific link contains malware that then allowed hackers access into NFT God’s system. The influencer then lost access to Twitter, Substack, Gmail, Discord, and wallet accounts, due to the hack. This further led to the anonymous crypto builder losing almost all his digital assets and collateral damage to his closest followers.
NFT God states that they used their Ledger as a hot wallet rather than a cold wallet. Therefore, this left them open to hacks. To be specific, they entered the seed phrase in a way that “no longer made it a cold wallet.” This in turn grants access to hackers to users’ NFTs and crypto. Therefore, the malicious software got into the system due to NFT God clicking on a fake download link. NFT God was trying to download the popular video streaming software OBS, and clicked on one of the sponsored ad links, instead of the official link.
The influencer aimed to live-stream a video game for the first time, via the (installed) OBS software. However, a couple of hours after the installation, Twitter user Klopp.eth notified NFT God of the strange activity.
The founder of cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato was arrested and charged with processing $700 million in illicit funds, part of the Justice Department's efforts to take down a "money laundering engine" which it says "fueled a high-tech axis of cryptocrime."
Anatoly Legkodymov was arrested in Miami on Tuesday night for allegedly operating a money transmitting business that did not meet anti-money laundering requirements and moved illicit funds. The 40-year-old Russian national, who lives in China, will be arraigned in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on Wednesday afternoon.
“Overnight, the department worked with key partners here and abroad to disrupt Bitzlato, the China-based money laundering engine that fueled a high-tech axis of cryptocrime," Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said at a press conference. "Whether you break our laws from China or Europe – or abuse our financial system from a tropical island — you can expect to answer for your crimes inside a United States courtroom.”
Kevin Rose, the co-founder of the nonfungible token (NFT) collection Moonbirds, has fallen victim to a phishing scam leading to more than $1.1 million worth of his personal NFTs stolen.
The NFT creator and PROOF co-founder shared the news with his 1.6 million Twitter followers on Jan. 25, asking them to avoid buying any Squiggles NFTs until his team managed to get them flagged as stolen.
It is understood that Rose’s NFTs were drained after he approveda malicious signature that transferred a significant proportion of his NFT assets to the exploiter.
An independent analysis from Arkham found that the exploiter extracted at least one Autoglyph, which has a floor price of 345 ETH; 25 Art Blocks — also known as Chromie Squiggles — worth at least a total of 332.5 ETH; and nine OnChainMonkey items, worth at least 7.2 Ether.
In total, at least 684.7 ETH ($1.1 million) was extracted.