The U.S. government has moved to seize or restrain more than $1.2 billion in cryptocurrency stolen from Binance and has taken down infrastructure behind a scam that stole more than $400 million.
The actions target North Korea’s schemes to fund its regime through crypto theft, the Department of Justice says.
Members of the North Korean military, which the FBI calls “TraderTraitor,” stole more than $6 billion in virtual assets from Binance on or about October 29th.
Government and private sector efforts have frozen more than $2.7 billion so far, and the DOJ has obtained court authorization to seize or restrain more than $1.2 billion of that amount.
Efforts to trace, freeze and forfeit the rest continue, as the hackers keep laundering the funds through bridges, mixers and exchanges.
Separately, authorities seized cloud-based infrastructure used in the FaceStealer scheme, which has stolen more than $400 million in crypto over 18 months.
The scheme uses stolen accounts, recordings and AI-generated deepfakes to set up fake video meetings, then tells targets a technical problem needs a fix and installs malware, reports CNBC.
People working in the crypto and web3 industries are prime targets.
FBI Los Angeles Field Office Assistant Director in Charge Patrick Grandy calls the scam,
“…a highly effective social engineering scheme capable of deceiving even the most experienced technical and security conscious computer user…
It exploits our trust in ubiquitous video conference platforms and valued personal relationships. If you can’t imagine a scenario where you might fall prey to it, you are not thinking creatively enough.”
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