North Korea’s $147.5 million cryptocurrency scandal exposed

The United Nations (UN) recently discovered violations of international financial laws related to North Korea.

North Korea was reported to have laundered $147.5 million in stolen cryptocurrency through Tornado Cash in March.

North Korea’s cryptocurrency laundering exposed

The UN investigated 97 cyberattacks against cryptocurrency companies. The scale of these attacks perpetrated by North Korea over the past seven years amounts to approximately $3.6 billion.

One of the major incidents was the theft of $147.5 million worth of cryptocurrency from the HTX cryptocurrency exchange in 2023.

Elliptic revealed that North Korea’s Lazarus group stole $112.5 million in cryptocurrency from its platform and its cross-chain bridge, HECO. Since March 13, 2024, perpetrators have laundered more than $100 million from hacks through Tornado Cash to hide the path of transactions.

Read more: Cryptocurrency Project Security: A Guide to Early Threat Detection

North Korea’s continued use of cryptocurrency mixers highlights key flaws in international sanctions enforcement. States take advantage of the anonymity these platforms provide to fund banned nuclear and missile programs.

On August 8, 2022, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on Tornado Cache. They accused the platform of helping hackers launder $7 billion worth of cryptocurrency since 2019.

Tornado Cash’s punishment sparked controversy around the world as its developer, Alexey Pertsev, was implicated in a money laundering scheme. Dutch authorities arrested Pertsev in the Netherlands in August 2022, around the same time the U.S. government blacklisted Tornado Cash.