320 Seized Bitcoins Stolen from Prosecutors' Wallet ‘Voluntarily Returned’ After Six Months

[Financial News] Around 320 Bitcoins that had been stolen from the prosecution service’s electronic wallet have been recovered after roughly six months.

In cryptocurrency crimes, where money laundering is relatively easy, it is highly unusual for the perpetrator to voluntarily return the assets. Industry observers therefore say it is hard to rule out the possibility of insider involvement.
According to the Supreme Prosecutors' Office of the Republic of Korea (SPO) on the 19th, the Gwangju District Prosecutors' Office confirmed that 320.88 Bitcoins that had gone missing were transferred back into the prosecution service’s wallet at about 8:06 p.m. on the 17th. Based on prices at the time of the theft, the Bitcoins were worth around 40 billion won.
Regarding how they were recovered, the prosecution service explained, "The Bitcoins that had been moved to an unidentified wallet were all returned to the prosecution service’s wallet on the afternoon of the 17th, which was Lunar New Year’s Day," adding, "We believe the phishing offender, feeling pressure from the prosecution service’s all-out investigation, transferred them back to their original location."
To prevent any further theft, the prosecution service has moved the Bitcoins twice over three days into the wallet of a domestic virtual asset exchange with enhanced security, where they are currently being held.

Some, however, argue that it is difficult to completely dismiss the possibility of insider involvement. They point out that, although the stolen cryptocurrency could have been laundered using Dark Web-based services, the fact that it was instead sent back is hard to explain.
In response, the prosecution service drew a line, saying, "At this point, we have not identified any concrete indications that would justify suspecting insider involvement."
The Bitcoins in question were known to have been stored in a USB-type cold wallet, which is considered virtually impossible to hack from the outside. This led to controversy over possible insider involvement from the early stages of the case.
These Bitcoins had been seized from a woman identified as A, the daughter in a father-daughter pair arrested by the Gwangju Metropolitan Police Agency on charges of running an illegal overseas gambling site worth about 390 billion won between 2018 and 2021. At the time, police found a total of 1,798 Bitcoins in A’s wallet and attempted to seize them all.
Because there was a limit on how many coins could be transferred at once, the police first moved 320 Bitcoins into a cold wallet. However, when they tried to transfer the remaining 1,476 Bitcoins the next day, they discovered that those coins had already been stolen by a third party.
Later, the 320 Bitcoins that had been seized first and stored in the prosecution service’s cold wallet were also stolen in a phishing crime, but have now been fully recovered.
sms@fnnews.com Seong Min-seo Reporter