Tag: Lazarus Group

A breakthrough in the Dream Finance investigation reveals a global retreat. Following the MiCA-triggered blackout in Lithuania, new insider intel and local reports confirm the liquidation of the group’s entities in El Salvador and Poland. From mysterious loans from AlphaPo to UBO links with SoftSwiss, the veil of transparency is finally being lifted on the Dream Finance empire.

Roman Storm, co-founder of the crypto mixer Tornado Cash, was found guilty of conspiring to run an unlicensed money-transmitting business. A Manhattan jury deadlocked on the far more serious counts of money-laundering and sanctions evasion, forcing a partial mistrial. The verdict intensifies the legal debate over open-source responsibility as regulators worldwide eye decentralized finance.

Cryptocurrency-based money laundering is escalating in scale and sophistication, with recent cases highlighting both the evolving tactics of criminal actors and the challenges facing compliance professionals and law enforcement worldwide. Over the last decade, crypto has developed into a powerful money laundering tool for cybercriminals.

In a bombshell move in the global financial underworld, the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has officially branded Cambodia-based Huione Group as a “primary money laundering concern” and is moving to sever its access to the U.S. financial system. The allegations are staggering: Huione is accused of laundering billions in dirty money for North Korean cybercriminals.

On Feb 21, 2025, the crypto industry witnessed its largest theft to date when hackers successfully breached ByBit, a major cryptocurrency exchange, and stole approximately $1.5 billion worth of digital assets, primarily in Ethereum (ETH). This unprecedented hack has sent shockwaves through the crypto world, raising serious questions about the security of digital assets and the future of cryptocurrency exchanges.

It is a concerning trend in the web3 space: an estimated $1.8 billion was lost to hackers and fraudsters in 2023, with a significant portion of these losses linked to the notorious North Korea-affiliated hacker group Lazarus. The global web3 space was valued at over $934 billion in 2022. That capital represents an unparalleled and attractive opportunity for blackhat hackers.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has taken decisive action against Sinbad.io, a virtual currency mixer, for its role in laundering millions of dollars from cyber heists conducted by the notorious Lazarus Group, a cyber hacking group backed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Sinbad has been a crucial tool for laundering proceeds from high-profile heists such as those on Horizon Bridge and Axie Infinity.

Before Western sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine invasion began in February 2022, U.S. authorities were cracking down on the Russian crypto scene. Since the beginning of the new sanctions in 2022, the American approach against the Russian crypto scene, which is under general suspicion of money laundering and sanctions violations, has intensified and is bringing charges against Russian crypto schemes and their masterminds.

As reported by FinTelegram, the crypto payment processor CoinsPaid has been hacked by the North Korean cybercrime racket Lazarus Group. The company reported that approximately $37 million in cryptocurrency was stolen in this crypto heist. Recently, CoinsPaid announced a near-complete recovery of its weekly transaction volume. The company used data from the Crystal Blockchain service to illustrate its recovery progress.

Estonia-based crypto payment processor CoinsPaid, controlled by the Austrian national Alexander Horst Riedinger and his Ukraine partner Max Krupyshev, has reported that approximately $37 million in cryptocurrency was stolen in a cyberattack likely orchestrated by the North Korean Lazarus Group. The company suspended automatic transactions and began moving the systems to new infrastructure.

Blockchain security and compliance firm Elliptic has provided an update on the $100 million stolen from Atomic Wallet, implicating the Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacking collective, as the likely perpetrators behind the attack. The group allegedly used the Russian-based crypto exchange Garantex, which is under U.S. sanctions, to launder the stolen assets. Lazarus evidently managed to find alternative ways to convert its assets into Bitcoin.

The U.S. Department of Treasury ’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned crypto mixer Tornado Cash saying it laundered more than $7 billion of cybercrime proceeds since its creation in 2019. Crypto asset mixers are designed to obscure funds trails by blending someone’s tokens with a pool of other individuals’ assets on the platform. The U.S. government says Tornado Cash fosters illicit activity. The Tornado Cash website is offline!