Court Sentences Hacker to 6 Years for Stealing $6.7M from Nexon CEO in May
A South Korean court sentenced an unidentified 39-year-old hacker to six years in prison and fined him 600 million won after he was found guilty of participating in a $6.7 million crypto hack targeting Kim Jung-ju, the co-founder and former CEO of game developer Nexon. The hacker, a member of a hacking group, pirated Kim’s SIM card and used his personal information to siphon 8.5 billion won worth of cryptocurrencies.
Court Fines the Hacker 600M Won and Orders him to Return Stolen Funds
A hacker group in South Korea stole 8.5 billion Korean won ($6.7 million) worth of crypto funds from Kim Jung-ju, co-founder and former CEO of the video game publisher Nexon, according to local media reports. One of the hackers involved in the fraud was sentenced to six years in prison following a ruling by the Seoul Eastern District Court.
The ruling was issued in November, but the multi-million dollar hack went unnoticed until today’s reports. The group’s leader is still on the run, the report said.
The convicted individual Chang, whose first name remains undisclosed, reportedly pirated Kim’s phone SIM card and gained access to his personal information. The group then stole Kim’s crypto assets, including Bitcoin and Ether from his account at the South Korea-based crypto exchange Korbit.
In addition to Kim, Chang pirated the SIM cards of 14 additional victims from May to June 2022. Kim passed away in February 2022 in the US.
Chang allegedly stole 8.51 billion won from Kim after 27 hacking attempts, the court documents revealed. Besides getting a prison sentence, Chang was also fined 600 million won and ordered to return the stolen amount.
According to the report, Korbit’s compliance department noticed the suspicious activity in June and reported it to local authorities. Nexon’s parent organization, NXC, holds a 65% majority stake in Korbit, one of the crypto bourses that was raided earlier this year in the wake of the LUNA collapse, which sent shockwaves through the crypto space.
Hackers Target South Korea
The hack marks the latest in a series of crypto hacks and frauds reported in South Korea this year. However, the collapse of Terraform Labs remains of the biggest events in that regard.
Last month, a South Korean court issued an order to freeze $104 million in crypto funds tied to Terraform’s co-founder Daniel Shin. The move comes amid suspicions that Shin gained the funds unlawfully through the imploded LUNA token.
Furthermore, Terraform’s founder and now Interpol fugitive, Do Kwon remains on the run. The latest report suggested that Kwon has registered a residential address in Serbia, from where he will likely take legal action against his extradition process led by Korea’s justice ministry.
This article originally appeared on The Tokenist
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