If the US government is filing this in the court, I have every reason to believe they already have a way to gain control of these funds because it just does not make any sense to go through this stress and still be bothered about how to ensure control. From the look of it, they only need the legal backing to ensure their actions are not declared ultra vires and its a good one because its shows an organisation willing to follow due process. The narration of North Korea is just to further establish the hostility between the nations and not that they are expecting compliance from that part of the world.

But they have to move their altcoins to BTC hence the amount to be forfeited is in BTC.


I think US DOJ just wanted to make everything and perfectly legal that's why they have to file this into court and they don't want to make it that they are confiscating this without legal basis. And they just want to prove how dangerous North Korean sponsored hackings and trying to target their South Korean crypto exchanges on the other side. And it's good if these stolen funds can be reimbursement to the rightful owners.

Unfortunately, even if the evidences against those perpetrators are strong and solid, I think there is a little chance they would recover those funds and North Korea's government would always deny any participation of it.

Now, the only thing the U.S. Government could do is to step up its economic sanctions to discourage them but I bet they wouldn't budge from such threat.

I don't think North Korea will ever be returning anything to the US no matter how many lawsuits they file against the state. They would just deny and deny all these allegations while continuing what they're doing. Knowing how NoKor treated most of the cases and sanctions against them, they'd just shrug it off and tell the world that they are being bullied by the US, with their ally China backing them up and just making things hard for everyone else.


I actually like that the US is being vague and cryptic about their wordings on which cryptocurrency are they talking about. Perhaps to not disrupt the market activity of the cryptocurrency in question but North Korea is still painting all the red flags and signs everywhere, so yeah.

Even if they file a lawsuit there is no possibility of recovering the hacked funds, because it is in North Korea.But atleast these things are now getting the attention from government which may become a reason for more regulations in crypto currencies on several countries.

If you read the documents, it didn't mentioned that the hacked funds are in North Korean hands, in fact, they

(1) identified a US email based
(2) when cyber threat actors tries to convert the stolen funds (a transaction ID beginning with 6918d31f), the exchange didn't proceed, perhaps the coins has been trailed and on the blacklist of exchange already
(3) they move to other exchange, but since it is blacklisted already, been flagged so no cash out happened.

Which means that the funds are sitting to those exchange right now and the US authorities did file this lawsuit to claim those and give it back to the right owners. And you have to understand that this case is not against North Korean hackers directly, but "in rem" - meaning lawsuit on the property itself, in this case the stolen cryptocurrency.

@tomahawk9 - yes, even the exchange are not being mentioned, but as crypto enthusiast, and who have been following North Korean modus, I'm sure that it is indeed Monero here being used for crypto jacking.

In another press release related to this issue, it was mentioned that a Chinese cryptocurrency money laundering ring was involved. After reading this I remembered litecoin hehe. This coin has low development, has a small community, however it has always been having very high volume in Chinese exchanges? This is very suspicious.



“Today’s action publicly exposes the ongoing connections between North Korea’s cyber-hacking program and a Chinese cryptocurrency money laundering network,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian C. Rabbitt of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division

Source https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-files-complaint-forfeit-280-cryptocurrency-accounts-tied-hacks-two-exchanges

Such court cases will take years before the final verdict and I don't believe that the funds will be recovered.
The US government has enough resources and clerks in order to "go through this stress" and investigate such complex theft.The main goal of this case isn't recovery of funds.The main goal is to stop the hackers that are backed by North Korea from stealing more coins out of South Korean crypto exhcanges.
I don't believe that the US government has suddenly become crypto friendly.This case is more about politics and international affairs,rather than cryptocurrency related stuff.

The lawsuit is meaningless because both countries do not have the same opinion about cryptocurrencies and North Korea will certainly deny that their country has a group of hackers who stole them from the US. This lawsuit only makes the political problems between these two countries worse only. 280BTC is equivalent to 3 million dollars. I don't think it's worth them suing North Korea.

It's possible, but I also think they're being vague cuz they don't wanna give free publicity to a cryptocurrency that they've had their eyes on ^[1] for quite a while now...US govt is not very fond of privacy coins, hell, even exchanges have problems listing Monero because Uncle Sam doesn't like it ^[2] (sames as the russians ^[3])

thing is being vague works for people outside of the cryptosphere, most of us involved in this little world [who are more likely to read these kind of crypto news] can quickly figure out what they're talking about (: 

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1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/shehanchandrasekera/2020/07/06/irs-is-trying-to-deanonymize-privacy-coins-like-monero-and-zcash
2. https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbase-ceo-exchange-wont-list-xmr-due-to-issue-with-regulators
3. https://cointelegraph.com/news/russias-new-crypto-analytics-system-to-track-dash-and-monero