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Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat
- talldayo 2y agoI'd imagine it's pretty easy, too. You've already got the assets in a poorly-accountable and liquid state - now all you need is a chump to unload the bag on. Almost makes you wonder how many cryptocurrency influencers are in the pocket of sanctioned nations...
- echelon 2y ago> makes you wonder how many cryptocurrency influencers are in the pocket of sanctioned nations That's a wild thought that hadn't occurred to me. With increased KYC and tamp down, where does this money go next?
- zmgsabst 2y agoIn much the same way the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it, financial networks consider lost opportunity due to regulation as damage and route around it. People will assume I mean buying drugs, but actually, I mean: - when I had $10k in my US bank account but couldn’t access it while traveling because I ran afoul of whatever KYC at Western Union after losing my bank card; or, - today, when I couldn’t prepay for OpenAI platform credits because I have the “wrong kind” of bank account for them. Society views the fascistic impulses of those in control stifling innovation and growth as damage — and will perennially route around them to get the system flourishing again.
- beeflet 2y ago>In much the same way the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it I think this is an outdated meme that has not proven very true. I won't go into a full rant unless you want, but long story short the architecture of the internet has turned out to be more fragile than expected. >Society views the fascistic impulses of those in control stifling innovation and growth as damage Maybe not society as a whole, but certainly sub-societies do, so yes. In this case, Lazarus group is a sub-society that is parasitic to society at large.
- zmgsabst 2y agoWhat do you mean? The internet has successfully resisted multiple government-sponsored PSYOPs and allowed the formation of a revolution to fix society from its current trend towards fascism, unifying the liberation movement across continents — which I would argue is working far beyond expectations. (Ed: I’d genuinely like to hear the rant, even as a tangent.) > Maybe not society as a whole, but certainly sub-societies do, so yes. All of society does. Which is why regulation (and oppression) needs to be focused to be effective: if you want to suppress Lazarus group you can’t catch too many strays or you build up enough societal counter-pressure your regulation is subverted.
- tw04 2y ago> when I had $10k in my US bank account but couldn’t access it while traveling because I ran afoul of whatever KYC at Western Union after losing my bank card; or, Why would you first stop be western Union if you lost your bank card? Ignoring my confusion as to why you didn’t have a credit card handy, or a phone with a banking app handy if you’re well off enough to have $10k in the bank. Why would your first thought be going to western union, a well known haven for scammers everywhere. OF COURSE it set off all sorts of red flags with your bank. I’d be more concerned if they didn’t put up roadblocks to someone claiming to be you, in another country, trying to pull out large sums of money at a western union.
- zmgsabst 2y agoHow do those things help? I had both a credit card and a phone; you can’t get cash with NFC. I was stuck using credit card services and cut off from most of the economy of the primarily cash-based society I was visiting. To the extent merchants accepted digital payments, it was primarily in their local banking app. > OF COURSE it set off all sorts of red flags with your bank. Do you not understand why I regard me standing at a WU branch with my passport in hand and access to my authenticator app on my phone, but unable to actually use the service regardless, as a frustrating experience? Roadblocks would have been fine: there was no road at all, no matter how many checkpoints I was willing to satisfy. From the same bank who happily allows online transactions to drain my account in obvious patterns of fraud from well-known fraudsters (eg, chat.versailles) without a single roadblock — so they can harvest fees.
- n_ary 2y agoNo ATMs nearby? Usually unless you are in some severely impoverished nation, ATMs should allow to withdraw(with some hefty fees sometimes) some local currency.
- zmgsabst 2y agoATMs and banks (cash advances) supported cards and cards with chips, but not NFC. My physical cards were lost together — which admittedly was dumb, but losing your wallet while still having your passport and phone/Apple Wallet shouldn’t result in “frozen out of banking”.
- immibis 2y agoOpenAI isn't the government - yet.
- lottin 2y ago> Society views the fascistic impulses of those in control stifling innovation and growth as damage You think society sees financial regulations as fascistic impulses that stifle innovation? Where do you get that from?
- zmgsabst 2y agoI didn’t say that in what you quoted. > Society views the 1:[fascistic impulses] of those in control 2:[stifling innovation and growth] as damage I say that people who run our societies are fascists — and their impulses for control [1] then cause a stifling of innovation and growth [2]. Which a five minute conversation with someone that does business will convince you of better than I will. However, you got cause and effect reversed in your reading: I said that fascists are stifling innovation with regulation, not that regulations are fascistic. I also carefully said lost opportunity — because regulations become routed around precisely when they introduce more cost than benefit. Eg, some regulations boost opportunity by creating stable business environments.
- sanp 2y agoAnd how many VCs heavily invested in Crypto startups?
- Waterluvian 2y agoAnd if any of them even realize it.
- CaptainOfCoit 2y ago> I'd imagine it's pretty easy, too. You've already got the assets in a poorly-accountable and liquid state Alright, so walk me through it because I don't see how it's easier to wash than other ill-gained funds like cash. You robbed someone and now you sit on $200M worth of Bitcoin. How you unload them so you have cash you can use, when every transaction is traceable and any exchange willing to trade for those amounts do KYC and follows AML?
- conception 2y agoYou run the bitcoin through mixers/online exchanges into monero/zerocoin and then to wherever to get out with fiat.
- artdigital 2y agoyou still have to do the actual laundering at some point. just because you have $200 million now in monero (which you also need to get to first) doesn't mean you can just transfer them to your bank account. exchanges will KYC you for that, and you will definitely get flagged for a source of wealth / source of funds check to prove where you got it from
- vernon99 2y agoFor $200m yes, but you’d be really stupid trying to do it all at once. Small amounts, multiple accounts, gradually over time.
- bitcoinmoney 2y agoIt's really easy. Use casinos in 3rd world countries to certify your money as gambling winnings. There must be underground network for this. So it looks like you're gambling and you got lucky. Very dangerous though. I heard that they charge 13% total fee. You come in at 5M$. You play for 1 week.. Leave with 160M or something. Bring that cash into the bank and deposit it.
- Loughla 2y ago
- kotaKat 2y agoThat's what the influx of shitty NFTs and "tokens" and "chains" are that keep coming up in Twitter ads these days. Criminals just building shitty bags to rip off dumb people while they launder away the profit underneath it.
- paulpauper 2y agomany of these services do not exist anymore (chip mixer) or increased security (sanctions on Tornado cash, more KYC, better chain analysis).
- aaronbrethorst 2y agoKYC Know Your Customer, for anyone else unfamiliar with the acronym.
- FabHK 2y agoAnd: ABC - Anti Bribery & Corruption AML - Anti Money Laundering CTF - Counter Terrorism Financing FATF - Financial Action Task Force
- consumerx 2y agoKYCing should be illegal.
- iamacyborg 2y agoYou’re going to have to try make a case for that one.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoBecause “Know your customer” is the government creating a plausible deniability shield for discriminating against a person or group of people. It should be the government’s job to prosecute criminals by proving they commit crimes, which allow the accused to defend themselves in court, which hopefully results in less corruption. With KYC, the intent is to not allow the accused a chance of defending themselves. It is a way to deny people rights without the costly hassle of going to court.
- manquer 2y agoIs there evidence of discrimination ? Are banks rejecting services because of age/race/gender/ethnicity etc ? KYC to reject basis legality of the source seems an acceptable tradeoff to live in a civilized society?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- shrubble 2y agoNote that this has nothing to do with the FreePascal/Lazarus project…
- zoklet-enjoyer 2y agoDoesn't have anything to do with the guy in the bible either.
- drzzhan 2y agoYeah I was confused for a moment there.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoThis is impressive analysis, but have I overlooked the laundering part? Money laundering is providing an explanation about why it is clean, not hiding the reason that it might be dirty.
- wmf 2y agoMost of the crypto world operates on "assumed clean" (blacklist) thinking so you don't have to fully clean anything.
- yieldcrv 2y agoand when the crypto passes through a government’s address it magically becomes clean :)) so the whole blacklist concept is dumb because the same funds have to be reset, but the old chains of transactions are still being passed around as if its a “gotcha” but theyre really irrelevant quickly and reintegrated back into the economy quickly
- SpicyLemonZest 2y agoI don't see what's dumb about it. It seems like blacklisting is the digital equivalent of "I don't want to do business with criminals" - I wouldn't knowingly buy anything from a thief, or from a store that knows some of its suppliers are thieves. If law enforcement has seized the property and auctioned it, then the criminals aren't profiting, so I don't mind.
- usrusr 2y agoIf you don't want to do business with criminals, don't buy crime futures. Because that's essentially what crypto are (unless not held and only purchased on demand for whatever oddball transaction you'd want to do that's neither speculation nor directly related to crime): demand outside of pure speculation (which is certainly by far the biggest part) must be completely dominated by demand for paying ransoms, purchasing illegal substances and so on. Even if "your" tokens are perfectly clean, straight from an artisanal miner running their rig purely on solar surplus or something like that, their value still derives almost exclusively from crime use cases, hidden behind no matter how many layers of zero-sum speculation.
- walterbell 2y agoUS/Canada 2024, $3 billion in fines by US regulators, https://rupakghose.substack.com/p/td-banks-aml-issues-and-fintechs https://rupakghose.substack.com/p/td-banks-aml-issues-and-fi... > DoJ investigation found.. [banking] business had been used to launder more than $650m between 2016 and 2021 from US fentanyl sales for Chinese crime groups and drug traffickers. Canada 2018, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33918115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33918115 > An estimated $5.3 billion of laundered money into B.C. real estate in 2018 hiked housing prices 5 per cent, two special reports released Thursday by the provincial government show. Australia 2015, https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2015/06/stop-money-laundering-so-our-kids-can-buy-homes/ https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2015/06/stop-money-launderi... > Credit Suisse estimates some $28 billion of Chinese money has been invested in the Australian housing market over the past six years
- mulmen 2y agoIs there any reason to believe the Australian investment is related to money laundering or drug sales?
- averageRoyalty 2y agoNo. The linked article admits they're wildly guessing and links to another report with recommendations but no numbers I saw from a skim. I hear this repeated regularly on HN but am yet to see a reliable source beyond "but it's Chinese money".
- Garvi 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- shakna 2y agoNo. Australia's national money laundering assessment [0] is not virtue signalling as a cover for racism. There's a history of money laundering for terrorism, child exploitation, slavery, and drug trafficking. There's also a history of arrests, and government task force projects to try and change that. [0] https://www.austrac.gov.au/business/how-comply-guidance-and-resources/guidance-resources/money-laundering-australia-national-risk-assessment-2024 https://www.austrac.gov.au/business/how-comply-guidance-and-...
- smashah 2y agoThis is probably related to Kim Jong Un's new Maybach GLS
- qingcharles 2y agoI had to look that up.. damn, right in their faces: https://www.nknews.org/2024/08/kim-jong-un-flaunts-new-200k-maybach-suv-in-front-of-homeless-flood-victims/ https://www.nknews.org/2024/08/kim-jong-un-flaunts-new-200k-...
- TechDebtDevin 2y agoHow hope ZachXBT gets paid well for all his effort in catching scammers. Not sure how he eearns.
- w_TF 2y agohe has been paid pretty handsomely from various grants and individuals
- pton_xd 2y agoOur own banks commit 10x more fraud than that. See TD Bank money laundering case ongoing, could reach $4 billion in fines. Wells Fargo $3 billion in fines for fraudulent charges on fake accounts. JPMorgan Chase $1 bil settlement for UST and precious metal futures fraud. And those are just the ones I can remember from the last few years.
- greesil 2y agoWhat about
- hanniabu 2y agoSad to see this getting downvoted. HNers hate to admit this because then they can't paint crypto has a technology enabling fraud.
- manquer 2y agoOur banks don’t work with Iranians or North Koreans , with crypto it is also about who not how much
- pjkundert 2y ago“don’t work with …” You seem strangely certain of that. It is unlikely that you should be.
- manquer 2y agoI am fairly sure that there is no formal way to send money from United States to Iran or North Korea by an individual or even a business without special government authorization. Happy to be proven wrong if there ways to send/receive money to countries via banks today. When we say North Korean or Iran we generally don’t mean people with those ethnic background[1] or even citizenship who have legal, physical and banking presence outside[2] these countries. We typically mean legal entities (both individuals and businesses) who are present within these regimes Are they sanctions perfect ? Of course not, but they are still far better than what crypto exchanges do today [1] that would be racist that is not the purpose of those sanctions [2] the governments of these other geographies persumably have controls and oversight into these people
- mattmaroon 2y agoSerious question, if the United States decided to unilaterally cut North Korea off from the Internet, how hard would that be to do? Could we just knock out a few cables? North Korea pretty much only uses the Internet for scams Or to make money in violation of sanctions. They certainly don’t allow their citizens to use it for anything else, and they don’t allow their citizens to leave the country because they would never come back. Even if it were only temporary, suddenly cutting off the Internet to the country would expose all of those remote workers to the people who employ them and don’t realize they are employing North Koreans when they all disappear at once. Is this just not logistically feasible? or are we just too afraid it would be unpalatable to our allies? I can’t be the first person who has thought of this.
- rwmj 2y agoThis wouldn't work against the bad actors as they could just proxy through a friendly (to NK) country. And would set a bad precedent of using Internet access as a tool for sanctioning.
- w-ll 2y agoYou think they are doing this from NK ip blocks/asn? Their physical links are more or less enemy of enemy with US, so they have no incentive to block. Its impossible to keep them off the internet.
- mattmaroon 2y agoOh I’m not imagine anyone helping us. Im wondering why we aren’t cutting undersea cables or drone bombing land based ones. All the “international sovereignty” responses are humorous to anyone whose paid attention to the last twenty years of the American military.
- brap 2y agoBecause China really wouldn’t like it, and that’s all there is to it. Is it technically feasible? Yes.
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- consumerx 2y ago[flagged]
- Try1275 2y ago[dead]
- szivsx 2y ago[flagged]
- earnesti 2y agoSo all the crypto went to paxful/noones, and was converted to fiat there. Should be pretty straightforward to subpoena them and get all data about their fiat accounts?
- DrNosferatu 2y agoInteresting to see that, apparently, Monero was never used.
- evilfred 2y agocode is law, no?
- seydor 2y agoThank god we have crypto or else we d never know
- aabhay 2y agoIndeed. We would have been sitting with our measly treasury bills, without a care in the world
- n_ary 2y agoQuestion from my curious mind. How are the Metamask instances of specific device getting replaced by modified/malware-d version? How does that even work?
- stuffoverflow 2y agoBasically they first need to get a remote shell and are then able to replace the extension source with the modified one. This article does a good job explaining it more in depth.[0] 0: https://securelist.com/the-bluenoroff-cryptocurrency-hunt-is-still-on/105488/ https://securelist.com/the-bluenoroff-cryptocurrency-hunt-is...
- n_ary 2y agoThanks! That is some extensive level of social engineering, reconnaissance and exploiting. Takes a lot of patience and discipline to pull such sophisticated heist.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Fokamul 2y agoWhy these Lazarus geniuses didn't use XMR at all, huh? I like it, that somebody thinks $4B is a lot. If FIAT CASH was trackable as crypto, your head would explode.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sarahwoods 2y ago[dead]