FBI Seizes $1.2 Billion In Crypto Stolen From Binance Hack

The FBI said Thursday it has seized more than $1.2 billion in cryptocurrency linked to last month's massive Binance hack, a takedown U.S. officials describe as a major blow to North Korea-backed cyber thieves.^[1]

Announcing the operation, the FBI said the recovered digital assets are part of more than $2.7 billion in stolen funds that U.S. agencies and private-sector partners have managed to freeze worldwide after tracking the coins across multiple blockchains. The Justice Department now has court authorization to seize or restrain $1.2 billion of that total as potential criminal proceeds, with officials framing the move as both a law-enforcement milestone and a step toward cutting off a key revenue stream for Pyongyang.^[1]

The Binance breach in October loomed over the announcement. The hack drained about $6.3 billion in digital assets from the exchange and affiliated platforms, a theft investigators say is the largest crypto heist on record and one the FBI attributes to North Korea's TraderTraitor hacking group. U.S. officials say TraderTraitor, also known as the Lazarus Group in some security reports, used a mix of spear-phishing, malicious code, and exploits in DeFi infrastructure to break into systems before rapidly laundering the stolen coins through mixers, shell accounts, and hard-to-regulate exchanges.

Investigators have tied the Binance theft to a broader campaign of crypto-enabled crime that Washington says is helping fund North Korea's government and weapons programs. In the same briefing, the FBI blamed North Korean-linked operatives for a separate "FaceStealer" scheme that allegedly siphoned off another $400 million in cryptocurrency over 18 months, using hijacked messaging apps and deepfake videos to impersonate trusted contacts and lure victims into handing over wallet credentials. U.S. officials argue the two operations illustrate how quickly North Korean units have industrialized online theft, turning loosely regulated corners of the digital asset ecosystem into a cash machine for a heavily sanctioned regime.

Law-enforcement and cybersecurity officials say the partial recovery from the Binance hack shows how much more aggressive and coordinated global tracking of stolen coins has become, even as they caution that the majority of the $6.3 billion haul is still missing. They point to the more than $2.7 billion already frozen as evidence that exchange compliance teams, blockchain analytics firms, and agencies in several countries are now moving faster to flag suspicious flows, while stressing that any gaps in regulation or enforcement can still be exploited by sophisticated state-backed crews like TraderTraitor.

1. CBS News