Hacker Returns $19.3 Million to U.S. Government Wallet Less Than 24 Hours After Stealing Almost $20 Million

According to Arkham Intelligence, the hacker’s wallets, beginning with the characters “0xc9E,” sent the funds back to the US government’s wallet.

A hacker returned $19.3 million to the U.S. government on October 25 after stealing nearly $20 million from a government wallet the previous day using funds pilfered in the 2016 Bitfinex hack.

According to Arkham Intelligence, the hacker’s wallets, beginning with the characters “0xc9E,” sent the funds back to the US government's wallet. The wallets had received the stolen funds on October 24. About 88% of the funds have been returned.

Onchain statistics show that the hacker returned about 2,412 Ether (ETH), 7,200 USD Coin (USDC), and $13.2 million in Aave-staked USDC. The restored funds do not include the approximately $700,000 that the hacker sent to immediate exchangers, according to ZackXBT.

Although the hacker’s identity and the reason for the attack remain unknown, such an occurrence shows an increasing trend of hacks and exploits in the third quarter of 2024.

This month, $50 million was stolen from Radiant Capital, a cross-chain lending system. The hacker compromised Radiant Capital contracts on the BNB Smart Chain and Arbitrum networks by obtaining the private keys required to sign transactions from Radiant Capital’s multi-signature wallet.

The hacker moved $52 million in cash to the Ethereum network around a week after the vulnerability, making it difficult to retrieve the stolen money.

Ambient Finance, a decentralized trading platform, experienced a front-end attack on its website the next day. The Ambient Finance team claimed a hacker had access to the website domain. Later, Ambient Finance reclaimed the ownership of the domain and allowed users to access the website.