According to previous reports by Zombit, on-chain detective ZachXBT posted a notice on X that he will soon disclose an illegal cryptocurrency activity worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He wrote in a tweet at the time:
“This week I’m putting the finishing touches on an investigation that’s been over 15 months in the making. It’s the largest I’ve investigated to date and I look forward to sharing it with you soon. No other new tweets expected until now .
Just today, ZachXBT announced the contents of his investigation. This time, the subject is how the North Korean hacker organization Lazarus Group stole $200 million worth of encryption from August 2020 to October 2023. Currency laundering for fiat currency.
The investigation looked into more than 25 cyberattacks attributed to the Lazarus Group across multiple blockchains. It tracks funds illegally obtained through mixers, peer-to-peer marketplaces, and centralized exchanges to understand how these funds are transferred from the cryptocurrency ecosystem to the real economy.
The findings found that Paxful and Noones received $44 million in illicit funds from the Lazarus Group hack between July 2022 and November 2023. After revealing that the group used mixers to hide funds, it became accustomed to using P2P marketplaces like Paxful and Noones to withdraw cryptocurrencies into fiat currency. Additionally, ZachXBT wrote on social media platform X:
"Thousands of people in the field have been directly and indirectly affected by Lazarus Group attacks, and that number only seems to continue to grow."
This article How to monetize stolen cryptocurrency money? On-chain detective ZachXBT digs into the money laundering routines of the Lazarus Group. First appeared in Zombit.
