Seized Criminal Proceeds from Gambling Site
Stolen via Phishing Site in August Last Year
The Gwangju District Prosecutors' Office has fully recovered the seized Bitcoin worth around 40 billion won that had been lost after investigators accessed a phishing site.
According to the legal community on February 19, the Gwangju District Prosecutors' Office recovered all 320.88 Bitcoins, which were criminal proceeds from an illegal gambling site and had been lost in August last year, around February 7. Their current market value is about 31.7 billion won.
Previously, during the process of checking the quantity and demonstrating procedures to hand over responsibility for managing the seized assets, investigators accessed a phishing site instead of a legitimate exchange, resulting in the Bitcoins being stolen.
After that, during the regular monthly inspections of seized assets, the Gwangju District Prosecutors' Office was found to have managed only the physical electronic wallet, which looked like a USB portable storage device, while skipping verification of its contents.
The loss was discovered last month when the Supreme Court finalized a prison sentence and a Bitcoin confiscation order for A, the operator of the online gambling site. When prosecutors checked the electronic wallet to return the assets to the national treasury, they found that all the Bitcoins had disappeared. Depending on the market price at the time, the loss ranged between 30 billion won and 40 billion won.
The Gwangju District Prosecutors' Office is simultaneously conducting an investigation to apprehend the Bitcoin thief and an internal inspection to determine whether any insiders, including investigators, were involved. It is reported that no suspects have been arrested and no insiders have been booked so far.
The prosecution plans to compile the details of how the Bitcoins were recovered and its official position, and to release them to the media soon.
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