Over 127,000 Bitcoins Stolen: China blames US Government of Billion-Dollar Theft
Five years ago, a crypto company had over 127,000 Bitcoins stolen; details are now emerging. China now accuses the US government of being behind it.
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A Chinese authority accuses the US government of being behind the by far largest Bitcoin theft to date, having seized cryptocurrency worth around 15 billion US dollars today. This is according to a report by the cybersecurity agency CVERC, which has now been published, as The Register summarizes. The authority thus presents an alternative explanation for the events surrounding the Chinese mining pool LuBian, from which more than 127,000 Bitcoins were stolen at the end of 2020. The billion-dollar theft was only made public in August by the blockchain analysis portal Arkham Intelligence. Two months later, the US government announced that it was in possession of the Bitcoins.
Whereabouts of the Bitcoin Loot Unknown
LuBian, which was responsible for up to six percent of the global hashrate at the time, had about 90 percent of its crypto assets stolen from December 28, 2020. LuBian completely ceased its mining activities in the spring of 2021; the company never commented on the theft. It was only five years later, weeks after the Arkham Intelligence report, that the US Department of Justice made it public that a 37-year-old Cambodian was accused of money laundering and fraud. In the course of the investigation, the seizure of 127,271 Bitcoins was approved, which were already in the possession of the US government. The accused was in possession of the keys.
According to the indictment, the man from Cambodia, known as “Vincent,” allegedly led a multinational corporation that ostensibly made money from real estate and financial services. In reality, Prince Group was one of the largest transnational criminal networks in Asia, which, with scam centers in Cambodia, generated huge profits, which were converted into cryptocurrency. The organization is said to have imprisoned hundreds of people against their will and forced them to defraud people worldwide over the internet and extort money from them. The US judiciary has requested information about “Vincent” and has not made public how it came into possession of the crypto assets.
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According to The Register, confirms that the more than 127,000 Bitcoins belonged to the Cambodian. He unsuccessfully appealed to those responsible for the theft to return the loot. Instead, the loot lay untouched in a wallet for years, which CVERC interprets as proof that a state had access to it. Others would have long since converted it to cash. The Chinese and US versions of events are therefore almost identical; disagreement exists on how the cryptocurrency ended up in the hands of the US government. Furthermore, CVERC omitted the scam centers. Instead, at the end of the report, the authority advises better security measures for the custody of Bitcoin & Co.
(mho)
