In late March, major South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb lost around $18 million as a result of a hack. While the details are still sketchy — for instance, it is unclear whether or not it was an inside job, as Bithumb initially claimed — a large portion of the stolen funds have been frozen by various exchanges who received them from hackers attempting to sell the loot. However, despite Bithumb stressing that the hijacked assets belonged to the company and not to its clients, the customers still can’t access their funds, since withdrawals and deposits have been disabled as part …

Disclaimer: this article has been updated to include comments from Vanbex. Canadian police have frozen assets of the founders of blockchain consulting firm Vanbex, which raised $22 million in an alleged fraudulent initial coin offering (ICO). The development was reported in a court document released on March 14. According to the document, Vanbex founders Kevin Hobbs and Lisa Cheng claimed to the public that they operated a Vancouver-based cryptocurrency firm, starting from 2017. The firm, which was interchangeably called Vanbex and Etherparty, is actually a shell company that developed no useable products, the court document argues. The police have now …

More than 7,000 cases of suspected money laundering tied to crypto were reported to Japanese police in 2018, a more than tenfold increase from the 669 cases over a nine month period during the previous year. The news was reported on Feb. 28 by local English-language daily The Japan Times. In 2017, just 669 cases were reported over a nine month period through December 2017, after new rules taking effect in April 2017 made it mandatory for crypto exchange operators to report transactions suspected to be tied to the movement of illicit funds. The twelve months and 7,096 cases in …

A Bitcoin (BTC) trader has been attacked in his home in the Netherlands by a group of robbers disguised as the police, local news outlet De Telegraaf reported on Feb. 23. A 38-year Tjeerd H. was reportedly the victim of a violent raid in his home in Drouwenerveen on Feb. 10, wherein a group of criminals wearing balaclavas and bulletproof vests with a police coat threatened him with firearms. While the motive of the raid is not clearly established, De Telegraaf conducted their own investigation revealing that H. had been trading cryptocurrency. De Telegraaf notes in the report that sources …

Turkish police have arrested 24 people allegedly involved in a 13 million Turkish lira ($2.47 million) hack from an unnamed crypto firm in Istanbul, local government-backed media Daily Sabah reported on Feb. 12. Following a report of an alleged hack from a crypto-related company in Istanbul, the city police’s Cybercrime Department found that that stolen money was moved out directly from hacked accounts to accounts on other exchanges. The money was reportedly stolen in major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Ripple (XRP). Turkish police further launched an operation to track the suspects, and discovered that the suspected individuals …

The New Zealand Police have reported that recently hacked crypto exchange Cryptopia is ready to be relaunched and resume operations, Auckland-based news agency The New Zealand Herald reports on Feb. 13. Detective inspector Greg Murton reportedly said that the main part of the work required by the High Tech Crime Group at Cryptopia's business premises in Christchurch has been mostly finished, claiming that Cryptopia management now have full access to their facilities and business premises. The inspector stated that the police are not preventing Cryptopia from resuming their operations, and reportedly declined to specify on whether or when charges might …

Police in New Taipei, Taiwan, have arrested fifteen suspects for allegedly running a cryptocurrency scam that earned them millions of dollars, English-language local media Focus Taiwan reports on Jan. 26. According to the article, the chief of the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) Li Chi-hsun said at a press conference that the fifteen suspects — including the alleged leader surnamed Lin — have been arrested in two separate raids carried out on Jan. 9 and Jan. 17. The arrested suspects have been reportedly charged with fraud, and the case has been handed over to the Taipei District Prosecutors Office. The group …

Following international police collaboration, a 36-year-old individual suspected of the theft of over $11 million in IOTA, as well as fraud and money laundering, has been arrested on Jan. 24. Europol published a statement detailing the investigation on the day of the arrest. The suspect was reportedly arrested by United Kingdom’s South East Regional Organised Crime Unit, together with the Hessen State Police in Germany, the UK’s National Crime Agency and Europol, following a search warrant carried out in Oxford, U.K. The operation that lead to the man’s arrest — and the seizure of several of his electronic devices — …

A Chinese user of the cryptocurrency exchange ZB.com said that the exchange reported him to local police in a post on the 8btc forum, a major Chinese crypto community, on Jan. 21. In the post, which has been viewed over 12,000 times with 135 comments, the user claims that ZB.com froze his account containing a 400,000 yuan ($58,000) balance. The user surnamed Zhang said that the exchange called police after he earned money on the ZB.com platform. Zhang claimed that he tried to report the asset freeze to police, but was rebuffed when authorities said that no case could be …

Indian police have arrested an associate of a group accused of conducting a crypto scam involving 5 billion rupees (about $71.6 million), English-language local media The Indian Express reports Jan. 7. This is the fourth arrest of the ongoing case and reportedly occurred a year after Thane police uncovered the alleged scam in Mumbai. The man, Rohit Kumar, has reportedly been arrested by Delhi police acting on a complaint from a Kanpur resident. According to the police, Amit Lakhanpal — the man who launched the allegedly scam cryptocurrency — is the CEO of a real estate firm. The police also …

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has received nearly three times more law enforcement inquiries in 2018 than in 2017, the exhange reported in a tweet Jan. 5. According to data displayed in the weet, in 2018 the exchange received 475 law enforcement inquiries from global government agencies, while in 2017 there had been only 160. Still, 2017 numbers were already considerably higher than the previous year, when there were only 71 inquires. Annual Law Enforcement Inquiries Received by Kraken - Source: Kraken tweet The tweet further highlighted the prevalence of United States agencies among the inquiries, stating “you can see why many …

A Taiwanese man suspected of stealing electricity worth over $3 million to mine Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) has been arrested, according to a report from local news channel EBC Dongsen News Dec. 26. The suspect, whose surname has been given as Yang, has been accused of allegedly stealing the electricity to successfully mine cryptocurrencies worth over 100 million yuan (around $14.5 million). Yang is purported to have used a minimum of 17 various business premises to open toy shops or internet cafes there as a facade for his alleged crypto mining activities. The report claims Yang hired electricians to …