US wins court authority over $1.2B in Binance crypto

On Thursday, November 12, the US Justice Department said it had court authorization to seize or restrain more than $1.2 billion in cryptocurrency stolen from Binance on or about October 29. The order puts a court-backed claim on part of the frozen assets, while the government’s effort to trace and recover the rest continues.

The department said government and private-sector partners had frozen more than $2.7 billion of the stolen funds. The $1.2 billion covered by the court authorization is part of that total, not an additional recovery. The Justice Department’s announcement describes the action as “seize or restrain,” and says work to trace, freeze, seize and forfeit assets remains ongoing.

That wording matters: the announcement does not say that all $1.2 billion has been transferred to government wallets or forfeited. It also does not specify how much is subject to seizure versus restraint, or set out a timetable for returning assets. The department’s release says the $2.7 billion figure reflects combined US government and private-sector freezes.

The FBI attributes the theft, which involved more than $6 billion in virtual assets, to members of the North Korean military. It calls the activity “TraderTraitor.” In an earlier cyber alert, the bureau said the theft happened on or about October 29 and urged virtual asset service providers to block transactions involving addresses used by the actors, including transactions derived from those addresses.

The FBI said it and its partners had observed the actors converting stolen assets primarily into Ether. It warned that the funds could then be moved through decentralised finance and instant-swap services as part of further laundering. The Justice Department’s latest release also names cryptocurrency bridges, mixers and exchanges as routes used to launder the assets, and says law-enforcement partners are working with virtual asset service providers to interdict them.

The department credited its National Security Division, Criminal Division, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and law-enforcement partners with working alongside those providers. Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva said the department and its partners had halted about half of the breach by freezing assets before they moved beyond law enforcement’s reach. That account describes the wider freeze effort; the release does not break down which firms froze which amounts.

For now, the court authorization advances the legal process over a portion of the stolen cryptocurrency, while the wider pool remains a mix of frozen assets and funds still being traced. The Justice Department says TraderTraitor actors continue to move assets through crypto services, and that efforts to recover them are continuing. It has not announced a final forfeiture or distribution of the Binance-linked funds.

Sources and documents

• announcement — justice.gov
• cyber alert — fbi.gov