Chinese Crime Ring Laundered More Than $1 Billion From North Korea’s Lazarus Hacks

A Chinese organized crime group laundered more than $1 billion of the crypto assets stolen by North Korea’s Lazarus Group, Cointelegraph reported.

On-chain investigator ZachXBT wrote on X on October 5 that a Chinese money-laundering network had cleaned more than $1 billion in crypto taken in multiple Lazarus-linked hacks.

ZachXBT said he approached the group a few days after the Bybit hack in February last year by posing as a paying customer. To gain the trust of a member identified as Jimmy Green, he said he put up $349,700 worth of stablecoins and accepted a 5% loss on each transaction.

According to ZachXBT, the money-laundering network operated mainly in Hong Kong and mainland China. By tracing information obtained from its members, he identified more than $12 million in fund flows linked to the Bybit hack. Tether later froze $442,000 of related USDT.

North Korean hacking groups are known to use multilayered laundering methods to obscure the movement of stolen crypto assets. The process involves moving assets across multiple blockchains and swapping tokens through decentralized exchanges, or DEXs, and bridges. Chainalysis has said hackers linked to North Korea had stolen at least $6.75 billion in digital assets by 2025.

Allegations that Chinese intermediary groups were involved in laundering crypto for North Korea have surfaced before. U.S. prosecutors charged two Chinese nationals in 2020 with laundering more than $100 million from funds North Korean hackers stole from a cryptocurrency exchange in 2018. The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control also sanctioned two crypto traders in Hong Kong and China in 2023 for helping convert stolen North Korean crypto into cash.

ZachXBT also said the Chinese group was involved in laundering funds from the roughly $387.5 million Bitget hack last month. Some members sought support for laundering activity through public Discord and Telegram channels tied to the services they were using.

He also said one member of the group was involved in laundering funds from the roughly $292 million Kelp DAO hack in April.