Japanese police charged 30 people with alleged involvement in illegal transactions related to the well-known $ 530 million coincheck hack in 2018. Tokyo authorities were tracking everyone’s transactions in various locations across the country.
It is estimated that illegal transactions total over $ 96 million
Initially, Nikkei reported that the suspects were either arrested or their cases were referred to prosecutors. However, Kyodo confirmed that all 30 people have been arrested and are now in police custody, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Police announced that cyber investigators were tracing accounts involved in illegal transactions back to “conventional” crypto exchanges. In fact, prosecutors said the suspects were converting hacked NEM coins stolen from Coincheck, making it easy to identify anyone.
Kyodo also announced that the 30 suspects’ trades using the exchange rate at the time of the theft are valued at over 10 billion yen ($ 96 million). In addition, the authorities said that the people knew that such cryptos were part of the hacking incident.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police have not disclosed the identity of the suspects as they are still under investigation. Sources cited by Kyodo provided further details on how the individuals handled the transactions:
Some of the suspects traded NEM for other digital currencies through the website and redeemed their holdings on cryptocurrency exchanges both domestically and internationally for handsome profits.
Latest developments in the Coincheck Hack case
Two hackers, Masaki Kitamoto and Takayoshi Doi, were arrested by Japanese police in March 2020. Kitamoto admitted wrongdoing; He claimed to have stolen over $ 19 million from Coincheck’s hack. Additional fees were later filed by the authorities.
The hackers bagged 523 million NEM from Coincheck on January 26, 2018. At that point, the estimated value of the coins was $ 530 million, which has declined since then. Today the stolen tokens are worth only $ 38 million.
Coincheck theft remains the biggest in the cryptocurrency industry. Gox’s $ 460 million hack from 2014. In August 2020, news.Bitcoin.com reported that a Tokyo court had confiscated crypto assets attributable to the crypto exchange raid.
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