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Money Laundering Confirmed from November Upbit Hack

It has been confirmed that money laundering has taken place in relation to the Upbit hack late in November 2019 where nearly $50mil of ETH was stolen from the South-Korea based cryptocurrency trading platform. About 20,520 ETH, or 6% of the total amount stolen has been laundered so far.

According to data from Upsala Security’s Sentinel Protocol, ETH has been quickly distributed and moved to exchanges around the world.

The wallet address 0xa09871AEadF4994Ca12f5c0b6056BBd1d343c029 reveals 19355.880264 ETH were moved to wallets associated with the following exchanges:

  • 60CEK
  • ABCC
  • Remarks (BGOGO)
  • Binance
  • BiKi
  • Beatty
  • Biloxy
  • Bitrue
  • Bittrex
  • Bit-z
  • BTC-Alpha
  • Bibox
  • Bitfinex
  • Course (COSS)
  • CREX24
  • CATEX
  • Digigifine
  • Fcoin
  • Hitbtc
  • Hotbit
  • Huobi
  • Liquid
  • Margin DEX
  • Switchneo DEX
  • Tokenlon DEX
The transaction from Upbit representing the 342,000 ETH hack found at 0xa09871AEadF4994Ca12f5c0b6056BBd1d343c029

In general, when a cryptocurrency acquired via hack is transferred to an exchange, those cryptos become the center of a money laundering event by being sold for fiat or traded for new coins or tokens. As a result, 20,520 ETH from the Upbit hack have been sold or are primed to be sold on the previously mentioned exchanges. Patrick Kim, the president of Uppsala Security, the entity behind Sentinel Protocol, said “we believe that the hackers continue to launder money through exchanges without any sanctions standing in their way.”

For example, Binance, which received 8754.487ETH from the hack, has accepted 125 transactions on their platform related to the stolen ETH.

Binance CEO CZ pledges support for Upbit to seize stolen ETH from a hack on Upbit which occurred on November 27th, 2019. So far 8754.487 ETH from the hack has landed on Binance.

Upbit has stated that they are seeking out as much help as they can get to halt the malfeasance with the stolen cryptos, and that “police investigations are underway.”

Due to the hack, Upbit restricted withdrawals and deposits of all cryptocurrencies for a time, but recently relaxed the restriction. Furthermore, they were urged by the Korean IRS to halt withdrawals and deposits on foreigners’ accounts due to a new issue which has arisen in regard to tax law and cryptocurrencies.

Upbit also may face some trouble renewing their partnership with IBK Bank in Korea which allows them access to real-name bank accounts. Those real-name accounts are required for Korean exchanges offering KRW pairs on their platform.

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