A South Korean Hackers stole $6.7 million from the crypto wallet of the late CEO of a business empire including cryptocurrency exchanges Korbit and Bitstamp.
yonhap reported that a branch of the district court in eastern Seoul sentenced an unidentified 39-year-old man to six years in prison after finding him guilty of hacking his wallet. NXC founder Kim Jong-joo. Kim died earlier this year at the age of 54. The hacker was also fined $89,000.
Kim’s business empire includes South Korean gaming giant Nexon, which is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. A keen crypto advocate, Kim also oversaw the purchase of Korbit. The platform is South Korea’s first crypto exchange – and is still its largest. He also bought Bitstamp, the oldest crypto trading platform in Europe.
In addition to his business activities, Kim was also an avid private crypto investor, and had built up a portfolio of coins that included bitcoin (btc), Ethereum (ETH), and altcoin holdings. The court heard that he kept his coins in a wallet hosted on the Korbit platform.
After Kim’s death, hackers, the court heard, cloned Kim’s SIM cards. The hacker then used the cloned SIM to access Kim’s wallet on Korbit — and managed to remove BTC, ETH, and altcoins from the wallet “on more than 27 occasions.”
$6.7m hacker gets ‘gangland help’
The court also ordered the hacker to pay a sum totaling $6.7 million to “three applicants” – believed to be members of Kim’s estate.
However, a prosecutor’s official was quoted as believing that the “damage” from the raid on Kim’s wallet “has yet to be fully recovered.”
The court also heard that the hacker had worked with “gangland” associates. The court heard that these individuals gave the hacker pointers to SIM cloning techniques.
Kim, who was battling depression, died suddenly in February while on vacation in Hawaii. At the time of his death, he was the third richest person in South Korea, with a net worth of approximately $10.7 billion.
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