US gets court authority to seize $1.2B in Binance theft

On Nov. 12, the US Justice Department said it had court authorization to seize or restrain more than $1.2 billion in cryptocurrency stolen from Binance, according to the department’s announcement. The FBI attributed the Oct. 29 theft of more than $6 billion in virtual assets to members of the North Korean military it calls TraderTraitor.

The $1.2 billion is part of more than $2.7 billion that US government and private-sector efforts have frozen since the theft, the Justice Department said. The department said it had obtained court authorization for the seizure or restraint of more than $1.2 billion of those frozen assets.

Authorities are still tracing and trying to freeze, seize and forfeit the stolen assets, the department said. TraderTraitor actors continue to move funds through cryptocurrency bridges, mixers and exchanges, according to the announcement.

The FBI, US Secret Service and IRS Criminal Investigation have worked with virtual asset service providers to recover funds, the Justice Department said. An FBI alert issued the previous week urged those providers to block transactions involving addresses used to launder the Binance assets.

The seizure authorization does not itself determine who will receive recovered assets. The Associated Press reported that the US government typically files a forfeiture claim with a judge, who then decides who has a legitimate claim to the funds.

Sources

• announcement — justice.gov