North Korean hackers launder Binance theft through fake meme coins
Original title: North Korean Hackers Create Fake Meme Coins to Launder Stolen Funds From $6.4 Billion Binance Hack
Elliptic says about 117,000 NEAR, roughly $430,000, passed through six short-lived tokens in early November.
Elliptic says operators linked to the October 29, 2026 Binance theft, attributed to North Korean group TraderTraitor, created disposable meme coins and liquidity pools to make stolen cryptocurrency look like trading proceeds. About 117,000 NEAR moved through six new NEAR tokens between November 5 and November 7. Laundering wallets accounted for every sale and nearly all purchases. The tokens were abandoned by November 8.
Unconfirmed: The Binance theft’s link to TraderTraitor is attribution from earlier FBI reporting, not a new finding in this Elliptic report.
- The six tokens were FUK, OLCCL, MEILI, MMLI, DABI, and SINU.
- Each token cost about 25 NEAR, or $90, to launch.
- Outside buying was under 1% of FUK volume; five tokens had no outside buyers.
- Earlier Bybit-linked laundering used a Tron token to move at least $24 million.
Impact: Stolen cryptocurrency moved through fake token liquidity pools
- 1.Scrutinize new tokens with few traders and separate buy-only and sell-only wallets.
- 2.Do not treat liquidity-pool withdrawals as automatically legitimate.
- 3.Rescreen accepted deposits when investigators publish new laundering addresses.
- Vendors
- Binance
- Threat actors
- TraderTraitor
- Victims
- Binance
- Countries
- North Korea
From the original article
3 min read at cybersecuritynews.com
North Korean hackers are creating disposable meme coins to move cryptocurrency stolen in the $6. 4 billion Binance hack, using fake trading activity to make criminal proceeds resemble ordinary investment returns. The operation places decentralized exchange liquidity pools between wallets holding stolen assets and wallets collecting the proceeds, complicating efforts to trace and freeze the money.
By Tushar Subhra Dutta · cybersecuritynews.com
A short excerpt; the article and its images belong to the publisher. Summary, key facts and assessment above are AI-written from the article and can be wrong.