Poloniex hacker moves stolen funds for first time, keeping $182m untouched

Poloniex cryptocurrency exchange hacker transferred 100 ETH to Tornado Cash mixer.

According to journalist Colin Wu, this is the first time a hacker has decided to launder stolen assets. At the same time, $182 million worth of cryptocurrencies in Ethereum (ETH), Tron (TRX), Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Token (BTCT) remain in the hacker’s wallet.

Today Poloniex Hacker: 0x3E…fDFd transferred 100 ETH (approximately $308,000) to Tornado Cash. This is the first time the Poloniex hacker transferred funds to Tornado Cash for money laundering purposes. Currently, the Poloniex hacker also has $182 million in crypto assets.

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) May 7, 2024

Poloniex lost almost $125 million in cryptocurrency due to the attack on November 10, 2023. Exchange owner Justin Sun announced that some of the assets associated with the hacker’s addresses had been successfully identified and frozen. Sun then offered the hacker to return the stolen assets in exchange for a $10 million reward.

Hackers of cryptocurrency platform Kronos Research and Hundred Finance cross-chain lending protocol have also begun transferring funds to cryptocurrency mixing service Tornado Cash.

Analytics firm PeckShield reported that the hacker initially executed a test transaction with $200 worth of ETH, then transferred 1,314 ETH, equivalent to about $4 million, to a new address. The hacker carried out 10 transactions of 100 ETH from the last address, moving the money to the Tornado Cash service.

Funds sent to Tornado Cash increased to 3,000 ETH for approximately $3 million.

Kronos Capital was hacked in November 2023 after attackers managed to access API keys.

Since Tornado Cash can be used to move illegally obtained funds, the US government imposed sanctions on this crypto mixer in August 2022. Its developers were accused of money laundering and sanctions violations. At the end of March, the prosecutor’s office asked the court to sentence Tornado Cash co-founder Alexey Pertsev to five years in prison.