North Korean hackers used an Elon Musk meme coin to launder money!
On November 9, blockchain analytics firm Elliptic published an investigation revealing that North Korean hackers suspected of involvement in the theft of approximately $6.3 billion from Binance used at least six self-issued meme coins to move funds.
One of the tokens even featured Elon Musk’s likeness.
The investigation said the hackers bought and sold meme coins through different wallets in an attempt to make the stolen funds look like proceeds from legitimate transactions.
Between November 5 and 7, approximately 117,000 NEAR tokens, worth around $430,000, were transferred through related transactions.
Notably, $430,000 is only the volume of related transactions identified by the investigation so far, not the total amount stolen in the heist.
The incident shows that meme coins can also be exploited by criminals as a way to make on-chain funds harder to trace.
On November 9, blockchain analytics firm Elliptic published an investigation revealing that North Korean hackers suspected of involvement in the theft of approximately $6.3 billion from Binance used at least six self-issued meme coins to move funds.
One of the tokens even featured Elon Musk’s likeness.
The investigation said the hackers bought and sold meme coins through different wallets in an attempt to make the stolen funds look like proceeds from legitimate transactions.
Between November 5 and 7, approximately 117,000 NEAR tokens, worth around $430,000, were transferred through related transactions.
Notably, $430,000 is only the volume of related transactions identified by the investigation so far, not the total amount stolen in the heist.
The incident shows that meme coins can also be exploited by criminals as a way to make on-chain funds harder to trace.
