fortuneo

After $133 million was stolen, the market still rose by more than 5 points after $ETH 24 hours—you have to wonder whether this market is really that calm or just hasn’t understood what happened.

According to ZachXBT and French crypto journalist Grégory Raymond (as reported by ChainCatcher), the victim was Fortuneo, an online bank owned by French cooperative bank Crédit Mutuel Arkéa. The scammers used fake identities that passed KYC checks to open accounts at Kraken, OKX, and Crypto.com, then transferred money from Fortuneo into them. The names matched exactly, so the transactions didn’t trigger any risk controls. More than $106 million in USDC and USDT was withdrawn alone. Of that, $63 million was swapped for 27,553 ETH through UniswapX, then sent to instant exchange services like WellWallet, Kyrrex, and Wagyu, where it was ultimately converted into XMR. ZachXBT thinks it probably wasn’t the work of Lazarus Group, but the perpetrators haven’t been found yet.

Kraken began freezing funds on the night of November 2, saying its systems hadn’t been compromised. Raymond said the $133 million was just what could be seen on-chain, and the actual amount could be higher; at least $30 million had already been laundered and moved. But look at the market: $BTC is above $80,194, $ETH is still rising, and $USDT hasn’t budged. Kraken’s quick response may be one reason the market isn’t panicking. But 27,553 ETH is still moving through mixers, and $30 million has already slipped away. If anything else comes to light on-chain, it’s hard to say this won’t come back to hit the market.

Put simply, this case shows money from traditional banks flowing into crypto channels—and those channels have once again been proven vulnerable. On-chain sleuths will probably have their work cut out for them.

#Fortuneo #ZachXBT #CryptoSecurity