Hacker gives back $19.2M to the US government

In a recent update, the hacker who stole $20 million from the US government’s crypto wallet returned $19.2 million. The sum, divided by 13.19M $aUSDC and 2,408 $ETH, was sent back to the government wallet.

Earlier today, an estimated $20 million worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from the US government, as reported by Arkham Intelligence. The stolen funds were related to the Oxc9E. The same account also received assets from the accounts involved in the 2016 Bitfinex Hack.

𝗨𝗣𝗗𝗔𝗧𝗘: $𝟭𝟵𝗠 𝗨𝗦 𝗚𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗱

The US Government’s address has just received $19.3M back following yesterday’s reported hack, less than 24 hours after the initial address breach.

88% of the compromised USD value has now been… https://t.co/F8q6iikBrT pic.twitter.com/Vo7I7ZH9K1

— Arkham (@arkham) October 25, 2024

$20 million worth of stolen crypto included various coins

According to the earlier report from Arkham, the stolen assets included AUSDC stablecoin, which was worth $13.7 million. The rest of the stolen assets were USDC worth $5.4 million, USDT worth $1.1 million, and Ethereum valued at $500,000.

The hacker was quick enough to shuffle the funds to numerous non-custodial wallets. The initial $20 million transfer was flagged just as a movement to a new address.

However, popular on-chain sleuth ZachXBT replied to the announcement that it was a likely theft as “funds tied to the USG started going to instant exchanges like N Exchange, Switchain, and Binance nested service.”

These funds are linked to a 2016 hack involving the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex. U.S. authorities arrested Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, who were accused of laundering the stolen assets and later admitted guilt to money laundering charges in August 2023.

At the time, the Department of Justice seized $3.6 billion in cryptocurrency from the pair. Lichtenstein stole around 120,000 Bitcoin.

The arrest of the duo led to the largest crypto seizure by the Department of Justice to date. The value of 120,000 Bitcoin at press time is $8.1 billion as per the current Bitcoin price of $67,500.