A Chinese negate cybersecurity watchdog has accused the U.S. executive of unlawfully seizing billions of bucks value of Bitcoin, alleging the sources originated from a 2020 mining pool hack as a replacement of being sourced from criminal proceeds tied to Cambodian businessman Chen Zhi.
A technical document issued Sunday by the China National Pc Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC), a nationwide cybersecurity agency, challenges the U.S. Division of Justice’s story of the seizure.
CVERC claims LuBian, a mining pool, became hacked on December 29, 2020, shedding 127,272.06 BTC—then value about $3.5 billion, and since having risen in cost to $13.2 billion—allegedly held by Chen Zhi’s Prince Community.
Chen, who chairs the group, is accused by U.S. prosecutors of working a huge-scale “pig-butchering” scam operation appealing forced labor and crypto fraud.
After the theft, Chen’s group reportedly sent blockchain messages in 2021 and 2022 offering a ransom for the return of the funds, which stayed untouched for four years outdated to being moved in mid-2024.
In its document, CVERC further alleged that the U.S. executive “might well also simply enjoy already stolen the 127,000 bitcoins held by Chen Zhi thru hacking ways motivate in 2020, making [the seizure] a frequent ‘sunless-eats-sunless’ operation orchestrated by a negate-stage hacking organization,” the evaluation reads, as machine-translated from Mandarin.
CVERC argues the addresses listed in the DOJ’s indictment of Chen Zhi correspond to those from the 2020 LuBian breach, citing analyses from Elliptic and Arkham Intelligence to motivate its claim that the seized funds originated from compromised mining operations in China and Iran.
Per week after the DOJ’s October 14 announcement, some $2 billion value of Bitcoin had been moved to current wallets.
The allegations of theft had been first reported by the Global Times, an English-language tabloid stride by the Of us’s Day after day, the legit negate newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party.
Decrypt has reached out to CVERC, the U.S. Treasury, and the U.S. DOJ for commentary. Separate confirmation requests had been sent to Elliptic and Arkham Intelligence.
Insider theft?
TRM Labs, a blockchain intelligence agency, confirmed with Decrypt that the seized Bitcoin “originated from 25 unhosted wallets managed by Chen as of 2020,” according to their compare.
“While we don’t know clearly how or why they had been moved from Chen’s wallets, the DOJ forfeiture complaint hints at one notion of what occurred, a minimal of from the standpoint of the Prince Community: an insider stole the money,” Angela Ang, head of policy and strategic partnerships for Asia Pacific at TRM Labs, suggested Decrypt.
Ang added that on-chain job indicates the following major bolt of these funds had been between June and July 2024.
The funds are now in U.S. executive custody, Ang well-liked, suggesting that “the 2024 transactions seemingly signify the switch of those sources into their possession.”
Requested whether their findings integrated documentation on how U.S. authorities obtained gain entry to to or retain watch over of the wallets identified in its document, Ang acknowledged obstacles.
“Correct now we don’t enjoy laborious solutions as to how the funds came to be in U.S. executive custody, but it with out a doubt is plausibly linked to the earlier chain of actions,” Ang acknowledged.
