A U.S. court authorized authorities to seize or restrain cryptocurrency worth more than $1.2 billion tied to Binance’s Oct. 29 theft, while investigators continue tracking the funds.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said U.S. agencies and private-sector partners have frozen stolen assets worth more than $2.7 billion, including the crypto covered by the order. The department said investigators are still following the funds and pursuing forfeiture, while TraderTraitor actors have moved proceeds across bridges, mixers and exchanges.
The department put the value of virtual assets taken from Binance by North Korean military members on or about Oct. 29 at more than $6 billion. An Oct. 31 alert from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) uses TraderTraitor for the North Korean cyber activity. The FBI and its partners at the U.S. Secret Service and the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation division said they observed the stolen funds shifting mainly into Ether (ETH) and urged virtual-asset providers to block transactions tied to addresses used to launder them.
The court action does not confirm that every covered asset has been seized or returned. The department did not state how much of the covered value is in each token.
