U.S. Department of Justice Searches for Missing FTX Money

12/27/2022

1 minute read

2022.12.27 14:40

Budrigannews.com – The United States Department of Justice has launched an investigation into the whereabouts of approximately $372 million in missing digital assets from the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchanges FTX and FTX US, as reported in a Bloomberg report on December 27. In the midst of bankruptcy and internal collapse, on November 12, FTX issued a warning to customers about unusual wallet activity involving at least 228,523 ETH that had been transferred out of the exchange by an unknown individual.

Ryne Miller, FTX US’s general counsel, confirmed on November 11, the night of the company’s bankruptcy filing, that the transactions were unauthorized and that the subsidiary exchange had moved all crypto to cold wallets as a precaution.

Elliptic, a blockchain forensics firm, wrote on November 20 that the unauthorized transfers totaled $477 million, and that the unidentified perpetrator exchanged the stolen Ether for RenBTC before using the RenBridge service to bridge to Bitcoin. Alameda Research, a hedge fund linked to FTX, bought Ren last year. Elliptic claims that Ren “launders hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto.”

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Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of FTX, asserted that the incident was committed by either a former FTX employee or someone who gained unauthorized access to the computer of a former employee. I’ve restricted it down to like eight individuals. In an interview with citizen journalist Tiffany Fong, he stated, “I don’t know which one it was.”

Crypto analyst zachXBT claimed in the issue’s most recent update on Nov. 29 that a Bitcoin mixer was used to move some of the stolen funds to the Singapore-based exchange OKX. OKX’s director, Lennix Lai, responded, “#” The OKX team is looking into the wallet flow and is aware of the situation.”