- South Korea‘s National Tax Service accidentally leaked a seed phrase, leading to the theft of $4.8 million in cryptocurrency.
- The initial thief confessed and returned the funds, only for the wallet to be stolen again by a second, unidentified party.
- The country is seeing multiple crypto crime cases, including fraud by a legally “dead” man and a bribed police officer.
A stash of cryptocurrency worth nearly $5 million has been stolen twice in South Korea, following a catastrophic seed phrase leak by the country’s National Tax Service. The officials mistakenly published a photo containing the 24-word recovery phrase in a press release last month, which reportedly led to the immediate theft of $4.8 million in pre-retogeum (PRTG). Consequently, the first thief was arrested after submitting a confession, claiming they stole the funds “out of curiosity but then returned it.”
Officials at a police press briefing this week revealed the crypto was stolen a second time after being returned. “We will investigate the additional theft as we continue to investigate the previous suspect who confessed,” police said. However, the police have not identified this second thief or clarified if it was the wallet’s original owner, who was under investigation for tax evasion.
Meanwhile, South Korea is dealing with several other crypto crime incidents. In another odd turn of events, a man declared legally dead returned to repay victims of his crypto investment fraud. Elsewhere, a police officer overseeing crypto investigations was jailed for six years for accepting $82,000 in bribes to cover up a fraud case.
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