North Korean hackers are getting creative with their laundering tactics after the $6.4B Binance hack.
Elliptic just exposed their new playbook: creating worthless memecoins on $NEAR to wash ~$430K in stolen funds through DEX liquidity pools.
Here's the scheme:
1. Mint trash tokens (FUK, OLCCL, MEILI, MMLI, DABI, SINU) for ~$90 each
2. Pair them with stolen $NEAR in DEX pools
3. One wallet buys the shitcoin, another sells it back
4. Stolen funds move between wallets disguised as "legitimate trading"
The beauty? No direct transfers. Makes dirty money look like degen trading profits.
All 6 tokens were abandoned within hours. 99%+ of trading volume was just their own wallets ping-ponging funds. Zero organic activity.
They ran the same playbook on $TRX (Nov 2) and $SOL (Nov 3), but used existing low-liquidity wrapped tokens instead of creating new ones.
This isn't new. Same crew moved $24M this way after the $1.5B Bybit hack in 2025.
The kicker: Everything's still traceable on-chain. Public ledgers don't lie.
$43.7M in stolen $NEAR (11.8M tokens) hasn't moved yet. They're sitting on it.
Takeaway for degens: If you're providing liquidity or trading random new tokens with zero volume, you might be unknowingly helping launder stolen funds. Stay sharp.
Elliptic just exposed their new playbook: creating worthless memecoins on $NEAR to wash ~$430K in stolen funds through DEX liquidity pools.
Here's the scheme:
1. Mint trash tokens (FUK, OLCCL, MEILI, MMLI, DABI, SINU) for ~$90 each
2. Pair them with stolen $NEAR in DEX pools
3. One wallet buys the shitcoin, another sells it back
4. Stolen funds move between wallets disguised as "legitimate trading"
The beauty? No direct transfers. Makes dirty money look like degen trading profits.
All 6 tokens were abandoned within hours. 99%+ of trading volume was just their own wallets ping-ponging funds. Zero organic activity.
They ran the same playbook on $TRX (Nov 2) and $SOL (Nov 3), but used existing low-liquidity wrapped tokens instead of creating new ones.
This isn't new. Same crew moved $24M this way after the $1.5B Bybit hack in 2025.
The kicker: Everything's still traceable on-chain. Public ledgers don't lie.
$43.7M in stolen $NEAR (11.8M tokens) hasn't moved yet. They're sitting on it.
Takeaway for degens: If you're providing liquidity or trading random new tokens with zero volume, you might be unknowingly helping launder stolen funds. Stay sharp.