Poloniex Hacker Transfers Over $3.3 Million in ETH to Sanctioned Tornado Cash

The hacker behind the attack on the Poloniex cryptocurrency exchange in November 2023 recently transferred more than 1,100 Ether (eth) to the authorized cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash.

The hacker sent the Ether in batches and still held assets worth more than $180 million on different blockchains.

Poloniex hacker washes 1,120 eth

According data From Arkham Intelligence, the Poloniex hacker transferred 100 eth in 11 batches to Tornado Cash, bringing the total to 1,100 eth (worth around $3.37 million), and another two more 10 eth (worth around $61,400) on May 7, all within four hours.

In addition to Ether, the Poloniex hacker previously transferred 501.62 btc worth around $32 million on April 30 to an unknown bitcoin address (bc1qt…xfekh).

The hacker's portfolio currently has assets worth $181.3 million, including Ether, TRX, bitcoin (btc), BTCT, and Floki, with Ether being his largest holding of 25,563 eth worth $78.6 million. .

In November 2023, Poloniex lost $125 million worth of crypto assets to a hacker, and over 175 different tokens were stolen from the exchange's hot wallet.

Following the attack, Poloniex owner Justin Sun promised full refund of the affected funds and also offered a 5% reward to the hacker if he returned 95% of the stolen funds within seven days.

Blockchain security company PeckShield revealed in March that the hackers behind the HECO Bridge exploit, which also occurred in November 2023, transferred more than 40,391 eth ($145.7 million) to Tornado Cash.

Tornado Cash continues to be used by dishonest actors

The latest development indicates that cybercriminals are still using Tornado Cash, an anonymization tool that allows users to obfuscate transaction traces, despite being sanctioned by the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). United States in August 2022.

According to the US Treasury, the cryptocurrency mixer was used by cybercriminals such as North Korea's Lazarus Group to launder stolen funds.

Following OFAC sanctions, the developers behind Tornado Cash face accusations of money laundering and sanctions violations.

Alexey Pertsev, one of the developers arrested in the Netherlands in August 2022, was accused by Dutch prosecutors of laundering $1.2 billion worth of cryptocurrencies through the mixer.

Roman Storm has pleaded not guilty in the United States to laundering over $1 billion in stolen crypto funds along with other allegations, while a third developer, Roman Semenov, who was added to the OFAC sanctions list, remains at large.

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