Binance Freezes $7M of the $330M in BTC Allegedly Stolen From an OG Bitcoiner

Onchain sleuth ZachXBT said on Friday that about $7 million of the roughly $330 million worth of BTC allegedly stolen from an "OG Bitcoiner" early this week has been frozen

Onchain sleuth ZachXBT said on Friday that about $7 million of the roughly $330 million worth of BTC allegedly stolen from an "OG Bitcoiner" early this week has been frozen with the help of other investigators and Binance's (NASDAQ:BINANCE) security team.

Earlier this week, ZachXBT first flagged on Sunday that a “suspicious” transfer of approximately 3,520 bitcoin (worth about $330 million at the time) signaled that a large sum of crypto had been pilfered from a long-time bitcoin holder’s wallet. The stolen funds were subsequently laundered through more than six exchanges and converted to privacy coin Monero, which jumped in price as a result.

On Wednesday, ZachXBT said that the victim of an alleged theft — who the investigator has called an “OG Bitcoiner” — is an “elderly” person in the U.S. and that they fell victim to a “social engineering theft.” Social engineering thefts are generally phishing scams.

On Friday, ZachXBT also said they had identified two suspects. “Two suspects in the $330 million heist include 'Nina/Mo' a Somalian who operates a call scam centre in Camden, UK and accomplice “W0rk” who assisted with the site/call,” ZachXBT posted to X. “They have since deleted social media accounts.”

The $330 million theft ranks as one of the largest single heists in the history of crypto.

Besides Binance's security team lending a hand, ZachXBT said Cryptoforensic Investigators and the private investigator known as tanuki42 on X had helped with the freezing of the roughly $7 million.