U.S. Department of Justice has launched an investigation into the whereabouts of approximately $372 million from FTX.
The U.S. Department of Justice has reportedly opened an inquiry into the whereabouts of nearly $372 million in missing digital assets from the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchanges FTX and FTX US, according to a story from Bloomberg on December 27.
In the midst of internal turmoil and bankruptcy on Nov. 12, FTX alerted consumers to unusual wallet activity involving at least 228,523 ETH moved from the exchange by an unidentified offender.
Ryne Miller, general counsel of FTX US, said the transactions were unlawful on Nov. 11, or the evening of the company’s bankruptcy filing, and that the subsidiary exchange had shifted all cryptocurrency to cold wallets as a precaution.
According to a report published on November 20 by the blockchain forensics company Elliptic, the unidentified culprit exchanged the $477 million worth of stolen ether for RenBTC before bridging it to bitcoin using the RenBridge service.
Elliptic has accused Ren of “laundering hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency” since Ren was purchased by the FTX-affiliated hedge fund Alameda Research last year.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of FTX, asserted that either a former employee of the crypto exchange or someone with unauthorized access to a former employee’s computer was responsible for the event. He said in an interview with citizen journalist Tiffany Fong:
“I’ve narrowed it down to like eight people. I don’t know which one it was,”
Crypto analyst zachXBT said that a portion of the stolen money was transferred to the Singapore-based exchange OKX via a Bitcoin mixer in the issue’s final known update on November 29. The director of OKX, Lennix Lai, reacted, saying, “#OKX is aware of the situation, and the team is investigating the wallet flow.”
