Hacker Returns $19.3 Million After Draining US Government Crypto Wallet

On Thursday, a US government-controlled crypto wallet was hacked and lost $20 million. However, by Friday morning, the majority of the funds (about $19.3 million) had been returned. Data from Arkham Intelligence shows that the returned assets included #Ethereum and#stablecoin$USDC . However, about $1.2 million has not been returned, as some of it was transferred to exchanges and has not yet returned to the wallet.

ZachXBT, an anonymous analyst #blockchain , said the transactions involved show signs of a "bad actor" as the wallet repeatedly made complex transactions across multiple decentralized finance platforms and flash exchanges. Notably, the wallet was previously under the control of the US Department of Justice, after being seized during the investigation of the #Bitfinex exchange hack in 2016.

After receiving the funds back, the wallet continued to transfer large amounts, including $6.1 million and $11.6 million, to a new address. During this process, the wallet also received a small amount of TRUMP tokens from an unknown source.

These complex transactions included the use of the decentralized lending platform $AAVE , stablecoin swaps through decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap and $1INCH inch, and multiple transfers to different addresses. These transactions indicate a trend of using “nested” exchanges with low security, which are often exploited by cybercriminals.

There has been no further response from relevant agencies on this new development.