US Court Clears Seizure of $1.2B in Crypto Stolen From Binance

The US Justice Department has secured court authorization to seize or restrain more than $1.2 billion in cryptocurrency linked to an attack on Binance, per the department. The FBI attributed the Oct. 29 theft to North Korea, calling the group behind it “TraderTraitor.” The order lets prosecutors go after the assets, though it does not mean the full $1.2 billion has been recovered.

That $1.2 billion sits inside a bigger pile. More than $2.7 billion in stolen assets has been frozen through combined US government and private-sector efforts, the department said, with the authorized amount included in that total. Tracing and forfeiture work is still ongoing.

The department said members of the North Korean military stole more than $6 billion in virtual assets from Binance on or about Oct. 29. The FBI’s Oct. 31 alert described the stolen funds being converted primarily into Ether (ETH).

Officials did not release a token-by-token breakdown of the $1.2 billion covered by the court authorization, and no sale or completed return of those assets has been reported.