Lazarus Group of North Korea Launders $900 Cross-chain crime has been used to launder up to $7 billion in cryptocurrencies, with the North Korea-affiliated Lazarus Group implicated in the theft of almost $900 million of those earnings between July 2022 and July of this year.

Blockchain analytics company Elliptic said in a new research released this week that “the displacement of crypto crime to chain- or asset-hopping typologies is also on the rise, as traditional entities such as mixers continue to be subject to seizures and sanctions scrutiny.”Millions in Digital Money.

Cross-chain crime is the term for the transfer of cryptocurrency assets from one blockchain or token to another, often quickly, in an effort to conceal their source. This is a profitable way for cryptocurrency thieves to launder their proceeds and a substitute for Acc strategies like mixers.

Elliptic’s statistics indicates that a significant chunk of the 111% rise in the percentage of monies moved over cross-chain bridges was attributed to the Lazarus Group’s usage of these services.

The projected amount of bitcoin that the North Korean hacking group has taken from Atomic Wallet ($100 million), CoinsPaid ($37.3 million), Alphapo ($60 million), Stake.com ($41 million), and CoinEx ($31 million) since June 2023 is around $240 million.