Lazarus withdraws $1.2 million in Bitcoin from crypto tumblers
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Notorious cybercriminal group Lazarus appears to be moving stolen Bitcoins after stealing more than $600 million from crypto protocols and users in 2023.
The North Korea-sponsored hacking group withdrew approximately 27.3 Bitcoin (BTC) worth an estimated $1.2 million from an unidentified cryptocurrency mixer. According to data from Arkham Intelligence, Lazarus cashed out his ill-gotten BTC in two transactions on January 8.
A Lazarus wallet received 10 BTC worth $440,000 and 17.3 BTC worth $762,000 from the contract address. Shortly thereafter, the receiving address transferred 3.3 BTC to another address holding nearly $300,000 in Bitcoin.
The hacking group holds $79 million in illicit wealth in wallets labeled Arkham. Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH) and Binance’s BNB are the three largest assets held by Lazarus, who was reportedly behind one-third of all cryptocurrency hacks last year.
Cryptocurrency users throw their cryptocurrencies into mixers or tumblers to obfuscate the origin of the assets. Bad actors often exploit this process to mask their blockchain footprint following a hack or exploit.
In the past, Lazarus has sent stolen digital assets to services such as Tornado Cash, Sinbad, and Blender.io. However, US authorities have blacklisted some of these platforms and even charged their creators.
Tornado Cash developer trio Alexey Pertsev, Roman Semenov and Roman Storm currently face money laundering and conspiracy charges in the United States and the Netherlands. All three have denied wrongdoing, and industry supporters argue that open source protocol inventors should not be held liable for third-party applications.
District Judge Katherine Polk Failla dismissed a lawsuit against Uniswap that sought damages from the decentralized exchange for trading fraudulent tokens.
While a district court judge sided with the U.S. Treasury Department in a lawsuit involving Coinbase and imposing sanctions on cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash, the ruling is likely to be used by cryptocurrency players and defendants fighting DEFI-related charges in courts around the world. Consider it gospel.
