China’s cybersecurity agency has accused the US government of orchestrating the theft of about US$13 billion (about R$68.7 billion at current exchange rates) in bitcoin, marking the country’s latest attempt to attribute major cyberattacks to the United States. The theft of 127,272 Bitcoin tokens from the LuBian mining pool, which occurred in December 2020, is considered one of the largest cryptocurrency heists in history.
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According to China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center, the attack was likely a “nation-wide hacking operation” led by the United States. The silent and delayed movement of stolen bitcoins indicates, according to the agency, government action, not common criminal behavior.
The report, published last week, links bitcoins stolen from LuBian, once one of the world’s largest bitcoin mining operations, to tokens seized by the US government.
The United States claims that these assets are linked to Chen Qi, the head of the Cambodian Prince Group. The United States charged Chen in October with participating in a wire fraud conspiracy and running a money laundering scheme.
In the October 8 indictment in New York, the US government alleged that Chen and his associates laundered illicit proceeds by using them to fund “large-scale cryptocurrency mining operations,” including Lopian.
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The complaint states that addresses associated with LuBian “received large sums of cryptocurrency from sources unrelated to the new mining.”
Federal prosecutors in Chen’s case declined to comment on how or when they gained control of bitcoin. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a related civil suit to seize 127,271 bitcoins, making it the largest forfeiture suit in US history.
“The United States government may have used hacking techniques as early as 2020 to steal Chen Zhi’s 127,000 bitcoins,” the report read. “This is a classic, ‘bad guy eats bad guy’ operation, organized by a nationwide hacking organization.”
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The Chinese government has become increasingly vocal in accusing Washington of waging digital hacking campaigns. Earlier this year, Beijing claimed that the United States exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange servers to attack Chinese companies.
Last month, the Chinese government said it had “conclusive evidence” of a US cyberattack on China’s National Meteorological Service. However, Chinese accusations are often broad and lack the forensic details often provided when the United States accuses foreign adversaries of launching cyberattacks.
On Monday, Chen’s lawyer submitted a letter to a US court asking for more time so the businessman can trace the bitcoins stolen from Lupian. In the letter, attorney Matthew L. Schwartz called the government’s claims about Chen “dangerously misleading.” Prosecutors added when the indictment was unsealed last month that Chen was not in custody in the United States.
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“As we explained in our court filing, we are working closely with cryptocurrency experts to track down the bitcoins seized by the government more than a year ago — and which were stolen in 2020,” Schwartz, president of Boies Schiller Flexner and an attorney for Chen and the Prince Group, said in a statement to Bloomberg.
Representatives of the Justice Department and the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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