The attacker behind the $282 million cryptocurrency theft on January 10 has laundered an additional $63 million, bringing the total hidden in privacy assets to nearly $216 million. The heist is the largest individual social engineering attack in crypto history.
The hacker has been converting stolen Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC) into Monero (XMR), causing the coin’s price to jump 36% over the past week, peaking near $800 before falling back toward $620.
Decentralized bridges like THORChain were used to swap assets without identity checks. THORChain’s official accounts noted record transaction volumes, unaware they were fueled by stolen funds.
About $66 million of the original haul remains in traceable wallets, but investigators say these funds are being split into smaller amounts to hide the trail.
Security firm ZeroShadow confirmed the theft was a social engineering attack, not a technical flaw. The victim was tricked via a fake Trezor support channel into revealing their 24-word seed phrase, letting the attackers drain 2.05 million LTC ($153 million) and 1,459 BTC ($139 million).
Recovery teams have frozen roughly $1 million of the stolen funds. Trezor and other wallet makers warn users never to share seed phrases, which are the keys to accessing crypto wallets.
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