Blockchain investigator ZachXBT has increased his estimate of suspected losses from an unidentified EU entity to more than $133 million after tracing an additional $27 million in centralized-exchange withdrawals.
The revised figure, disclosed Tuesday on his Telegram channel, marks a $27 million rise from the $106 million he reported Monday. ZachXBT noted that some of the newly identified withdrawals took place after his initial public disclosure.
ZachXBT stated his working theory is that a large financial institution in Western Europe suffered an exploit that is now subject to a cover-up. He argued that the absence of proper incident disclosure enabled more than $30 million to be laundered, asserting that EU law enforcement could have frozen the assets had the breach been reported. Neither the victim's identity nor the alleged cover-up has been independently verified.
Bitquery reported that $62.98 million in stablecoins was exchanged for 27,553 ETH in roughly four hours. As of 13:47 UTC Monday, wallets tied to the suspected attacker held approximately $78.3 million, while $30.5 million had already exited the monitored addresses. Bitquery added that only $3.74 million remained in USDC that Circle could potentially freeze.
ZachXBT said the attacker has been converting funds into ETH and XMR via instant exchanges and cross-chain bridges. He noted that the laundering methods diverge from patterns typically associated with North Korea's Lazarus Group.
Source: cointelegraph.com