ZachXBT has identified French bank Cr\u00e9dit Mutuel Ark\u00e9a as the alleged EU financial institution behind a crypto theft of more than $133 million.<\/p>\n
In his latest update, the blockchain investigator said the bank, which reportedly holds over $235 billion in assets, was targeted over multiple days.<\/p>\n
The disclosure follows his earlier investigation into suspicious withdrawals from multiple centralized exchange accounts, which was initially estimated <\/a>at around $106 million. The stolen funds were reportedly withdrawn in USDC and USDT before being moved through a series of transactions involving ETH swaps, instant exchanges, privacy-focused cryptocurrency Monero (XMR), and cross-chain bridges.<\/p>\n ZachXBT also suspects<\/a> the actual amount stolen could be higher once over-the-counter (OTC) activity is taken into account. The identity of the attacker remains unknown. The investigator has also stated that the available laundering indicators point away from the North Korea-linked Lazarus Group.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Bitquery\u2019s blockchain analysis traced $108.8 million in USDC withdrawals from Kraken, Crypto.com and OKX to 15 wallets over a 21-hour period on November 1 and 2. Interestingly, 11 of these addresses had previously received funds from the same exchanges, which suggested they may have been trusted withdrawal addresses associated with the affected accounts.<\/p>\n Funds across 332 wallets were subsequently tracked, and Bitquery found that much of the USDC had been converted into ETH. As of 13:27 UTC on November 3, approximately $61 million remained on Ethereum in addresses linked to the illicit actor. The analysis also identified $28 million transferred to four addresses missing from the initial list of 11.<\/p>\n On the recovery front, Tether had frozen approximately $1.14 million in USDT by November 2, while Circle had not frozen any of the remaining $2.53 million in USDC. Separately, Bitquery flagged a transfer of 396 ETH to a Kraken deposit address on November 3.<\/p>\n The alleged breach comes in the wake of other major crypto thefts, including incidents involving BTCPay Server and Brazil\u2019s Mercado Bitcoin. It also follows the $6.3 billion Binance hack, the largest cryptocurrency theft reported to date.<\/p>\n As for Mercado Bitcoin, the Brazilian exchange suffered a major security breach, resulting<\/a> in the loss of almost $40 million. It assured customers that their funds would remain unaffected. This incident may be connected to yet another exchange breach, as BitMart\u2019s initial findings point to a possible link between the two attacks. BitMart founder Sheldon Xia confirmed<\/a> that the exchange was hacked on November 2, but described the amount stolen as small.<\/p>\n The post ZachXBT Names French Banking Giant in Alleged $133M Crypto Heist<\/a> appeared first on CryptoPotato<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ZachXBT has identified French bank Cr\u00e9dit Mutuel Ark\u00e9a as the alleged EU financial institution behind a crypto theft of more than $133 million. In his latest update, the blockchain investigator said the bank, which reportedly holds over $235 billion in assets, was targeted over multiple days. Investigation Expands The disclosure follows his earlier investigation into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247545"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=247545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=247545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=247545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=247545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Crypto Theft Spree<\/h2>\n