South Korea Police Track Second Thief Behind $4.8M loss

• Korean police pursue second suspect in theft of National Tax Service’s crypto assets.
• South Korea’s National Tax Service lost $4.8M in low‑liquidity altcoin after leaking its seed phrase.
• The police are preparing to launch a system for storing seized virtual assets before June.

The Korean National Police (KNP) agency is hunting the second suspect in the $4.8 million stolen funds from the National Tax Service (NTS). The KNP stated that the first thief confessed to the crime last month.

“The first thief submitted a confession to the Cybercrime Reporting System on the 28th of last month, so on the 1st we arrested the person based on that and are tracking the secondary thief,” a KNP official said at a press briefing.

South Korea Police Hunts Down Crypto Thief 

After arresting the 1st thief linked to the loss of crypto coins from the NTS last month, the Korean police are now hunting down the 2nd person believed to have been involved in the case. Notably, the NTS lost $4.8 million in PRTG coins last month after mistakenly revealing the wallet’s secret key phrase.

As such, the NTS has publicly apologized for the lapse in operational security and promised to tighten its internal controls. At press time, the KNP has not yet identified the second suspect and is seeking public assistance.

Notably, the PRTG token lacks deep liquidity, and the second thief could use black-market exchanges to quickly cash out. The KNP has a history of tracking down stolen funds successfully.

In 2021, the Seoul police seized 22 Bitcoins (BTC) as part of a criminal investigation. The coins were stored in a secure cold wallet, but the wallet later turned out to be empty due to unauthorized transfers, which were only discovered during a subsequent audit. Notably, the Korean authorities left the funds and the seed phrase with a third-party custodian, thus leading to the siphoning of the BTCs. Nonetheless, the Korean authorities recently caught up with the culprits.

The Solution

The Korean Police stated that it is working on a system to store seized digital assets securely. Furthermore, digital assets in South Korea have gained significant mainstream adoption, catalyzed by regulatory clarity, thus attracting significant attention from black hat hackers.

 “We are preparing to implement a system in the first half of this year to entrust seized virtual assets to service providers for safekeeping. Lastly, we plan to draw up a meticulous manual for virtual asset seizure rules and push it forward,” the KNP stated.

Meanwhile, Koo Yun-cheol, South Korea’s deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and Economy, stated that the government will take proactive measures to secure seized digital assets 

Related: South Korea Recovers $21 Million in Stolen BTC After Hackers Return It