WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said on Thursday that a court had authorised it to seize or restrain more than 1.2 billion dollars in cryptocurrency stolen from Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, in a hack on October 29 that the FBI attributes to a North Korean military hacking unit.
The department put the full theft at more than 6 billion dollars, with Binance itself reporting about 6.34 billion dollars taken. The 1.2 billion dollars covered by Thursday’s court authorisation is part of a broader freeze, coordinated with exchanges and other crypto firms, that has now restrained more than 2.7 billion dollars of the stolen funds, according to the department’s announcement. The authorisation is a seizure and restraint order, not a completed forfeiture; court proceedings over the money continue.
The FBI attributes the theft to TraderTraitor, its name for a unit of North Korea’s military also tracked under names including Sapphire Sleet and BlueNoroff. North Korea denies any part in it. “North Korea’s government bankrolls its rogue regime and illicit weapons program through cryptocurrency theft,” said M. Scott Proctor, the principal deputy assistant attorney general for national security, in the department’s statement, according to CoinDesk.
In a second action announced the same day, federal agents seized cloud-based infrastructure used in a scheme the FBI calls FaceStealer, which it says stole more than 400 million dollars over about 18 months through fake video calls. The FBI said it seized more than 900 webcam videos collected by the attackers, who posed as legitimate contacts to trick victims, including developers who maintain widely used open-source software, according to The Register.
The recovery effort is being led by the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, its Cyber Division and its Virtual Asset Unit, working with the U.S. Secret Service and IRS Criminal Investigation, the department said. Freezing was coordinated by the National Security Division’s cyber section and the Criminal Division’s computer crime section, together with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
The Binance theft, the largest crypto theft on record, has become the test case for whether stolen digital money can be recovered at scale once it has been moved through exchanges and wallets across borders. Thursday’s numbers suggest about two-fifths of the haul is now frozen. The rest remains the subject of tracing work that officials described as continuing.
What happens next is in court. Forfeiture proceedings will decide who ultimately receives the restrained money, and the department has not said when victims or the exchange might be repaid. The FBI has published guidance for people affected by the FaceStealer scheme, and anyone who believes they were targeted by the fake video calls is being directed to the Bureau’s reporting channels.
Sources: U.S. Department of Justice, press release 26-1356; CoinDesk; FBI FaceStealer guidance.
