Hacker Returns $19 Million of Crypto Looted From US Government Wallet, Arkham Says

The hacker who looted nearly $22 million worth of crypto from a US government wallet this week appears to have returned the vast majority of the funds

A hacker looted nearly $22 million worth of crypto from a US government wallet this week, but the majority of the funds have now been returned, according to the digital asset deanonymizing platform Arkham.

On Thursday, the exploiter plundered the crypto from a government address that hadn’t moved any digital assets in eight months. However, less than 24 hours later, that same address received $19.3 million back, recovering 88% of the compromised dollar value. The impacted wallet contained crypto seized from the hackers who looted Bitfinex back in 2016.

The hacker this week stole millions of dollars worth of the stablecoins USDT, USDC, Aave USDC (aUSDC) and Ethereum (ETH), and Arkham noted on Thursday that they had begun selling the proceeds for ETH and funneling the crypto through a suspicious address linked to a money-laundering service.

Arkham has highlighted several digital asset movements connected to US government wallets in 2023:

In July, a different government address moved over $2 billion in Bitcoin (BTC) seized from the Silk Road. According to Arkham, the coin shift was likely “a 10,000 BTC deposit to an institutional custody/service.”

In April, a government address sent over $131 million in seized BTC to a Coinbase Prime wallet.