Hacker Returns $21.4 Million in Stolen Bitcoins to Prosecutor’s Office, 2026/02/19 15:50:25

The South Korean prosecutor’s office has received approximately $21.4 million in bitcoins from an unidentified hacker, which were stolen from a wallet containing confiscated cryptocurrency assets.

On February 17, the unknown individual returned 320.8 BTC to the prosecutor’s wallet. Officials from the agency claim that they have blocked transactions on centralized exchanges from the hacker’s wallet, making it difficult for the hacker to sell the stolen bitcoins. The hacker’s identity remains unknown. The returned bitcoins have been transferred to a local exchange for secure storage.  

The theft occurred back in August. An employee of the Gwangju prosecutor’s office, responsible for the safekeeping of evidence, inadvertently accessed a phishing website and entered the seed phrase to regain access to the wallet. As a result, hackers were able to withdraw the bitcoins stored in the wallet. The loss was only discovered six months later. This incident prompted an internal review of all law enforcement agencies in South Korea regarding the handling of physical evidence.  

This is not the first instance of bitcoins disappearing under the supervision of South Korean law enforcement. Recently, it was revealed that the Gangnam police station in Seoul lost 22 confiscated bitcoins that had been stored in a cold wallet since 2021. Similar to the previous case, the disappearance was noticed only during a routine evidence check.  

In the United States, bitcoins worth approximately $40 million were stolen from the cryptocurrency wallet of the Marshals Service under the Department of Justice. This incident was highlighted by crypto researcher ZachXBT, who linked the hacker’s identity to Dean Daghita’s son, the CEO of Command Services & Support (CMDSS), which had a contract with the U.S. Marshals Service for managing confiscated crypto assets.