More than $20 million worth of ETH has been mysteriously returned to the ZKasino wallet – nearly three weeks after users accused the platform founders of fraud.
On May 9, the account @jail_monke on X reported that nearly $21 million worth of wstETH (including Lido staked ETH) had returned to the project's multisig wallet – leading some to believe that investors can soon get their money back as originally promised.
“One of the three scammers just sent funds back to the original multisig wallet address,” JAIL said, providing proof of the transfer using Etherscan.
The 6,021 wstETH moved is equivalent to about 2/3 of the amount lost in the scam, raising the question “Are they preparing to refund victims?”
ZKasino launched on April 20, offering an airdrop of ZKAS tokens to those who deposited ETH into the platform, promising ETH in return.
However, the project instead transferred approximately $33 million worth of users' ETH to the Lido Finance protocol, instead of returning the funds to users as originally promised.
This led to accusations of a rug pulling scam as more than 10,000 people transferred assets to the platform.
On April 29, Dutch authorities arrested a 26-year-old man suspected of being involved in the ZKasino scam.
Authorities seized approximately $12.2 million worth of cryptocurrency, real estate, and luxury cars from the suspect at the time.
Some in the crypto community speculate the arrested suspect could be the project founder under the pseudonym “Derivatives Monke,” who has been referred to by blockchain detectives as Elham Nourzai.
Binance supports
Binance's on-chain investigation team played a key role in providing information to law enforcement agencies to apprehend suspects.
Binance also assisted by freezing millions of dollars worth of stolen cryptocurrency after receiving a confiscation order from the authorities for the attacker's account.
Despite the arrests, illegal funds continue to move on-chain, suggesting other scammers may yet be caught. However, today's move to return money has brought new hope to the victims.
According to figures from on-chain intelligence firm CertiK, April saw $25.7 million worth of cryptocurrency lost to scams and hacks, not including the ZKasino incident.
This is the lowest historical number since 2021 according to the company, which began tracking the data that year.
Source: https://tapchibitcoin.io/hon-20-million-do-la-eth-bi-hack-bat-ngo-duoc-tra-lai-cho-zkasino-chuyen-gi-dang-xay-ra. html
