$500 Million Worth Stolen NEM Coins Apparently Laundered

Criminals who stolen NEM cryptocurrency from mighty currency exchange Coincheck have already converted the full amount into other cryptocurrencies, believe various cybersecurity experts examining the case.

Also it has been brought to our attention that NEM Foundation (organization promoting the coin) is no longer tracking transaction of stolen NEMs. When their announcement came to light, conversions of stolen currency rapidly increased.

The stolen NEM may have been split between an untold number of different accounts following transaction requests from the hackers, making its recovery extremely difficult.

According to the expert, the thieves had been keeping the digital coins in a number of separate accounts, which were all empty on Thursday evening.

Criminals created website on the dark web, where they started to trade stolen NEMs but also other cryptocurrencies.

Kyoto University professor Naoyuki Iwashita versed in cryptocurrency issues, saying that it’s likely that stolen NEM could be used to fund terrorism.

“The tracking by the foundation wasn’t an effective way of preventing laundering. It’s regrettable they didn’t take the measure of a ‘hard fork’ which would have returned the transaction records to the way they were before the theft,” Iwashita said.