Hackers stole nearly $650 million in altcoins from FTX’s hot wallets just one day after the company declared bankruptcy.
The attacker now has more than $367 million spread across multiple major blockchains after various bridgings and on-chain fraud.
The attacker laundered proceeds through decentralized exchanges (DEX) and cross-chain bridges, according to blockchain intelligence firm Arkham Intelligence in a couple of tweets.
Arkham Intelligence tweeted, “This address, 0x2cb, then bridged USDC back to Ethereum through Multichain/Anyswap and now holds its balance entirely in Ether.”
According to another tweet by the blockchain intelligence firm, “A total of almost $20 million in PAXG was frozen across the attacker’s four addresses that hold PAXG.
The attacker also attempted to cover up BSC fund transfers by “swapping” tokens with the recipient address set to a different address, 0x2cb.
According to Elliptic, hackers frequently use cross-chain bridges to launder stolen funds. “Chain hopping,” or moving stolen funds between blockchains, allows hackers to avoid detection by law enforcement. Here is how it played out:
On November 12, 2022, approximately $650 million in fraudulent funds were transferred from FTX’s hot wallet to two wallet addresses, one on Solana and the other on Ethereum.
According to data from respective block explorers, the hacker’s wallet address has since bridged the funds to various blockchain networks, including Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, and Avalanche.
However, law enforcement agencies were able to seize nearly $20 million in Paxos Gold (PAXG) tokens linked to the November 14 attack.
According to debank data, the hacker’s Ethereum wallet address contains nearly $228.5 million in Ethereum (ETH) and $8.184.9 million Paxos Gold (PAXG) tokens.
The wallet on Binance Smart Chain contains nearly $108.454 million in BNB and $1.685 million worth of DAI stablecoins. The hacker’s wallet address contains approximately $3.970 million in Tether’s stablecoin, USDT.
The hacker’s Solana wallet address owns nearly $144,999 in SOL and $27.549 million in USDT, according to Solscan data.
According to Etherscan data, the hacker owns nearly $338 million in altcoins and is the 35th-largest Ethereum holder.
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