Swift cooperation between Bithumb and Uppsala Security ends successfully, leading to crypto scammer caught and complete recovery of stolen funds
Singapore, April 26th 2021 — Uppsala Security, a state-of-the-art provider of award-winning tools for Crypto AML, Risk Management, Regulatory Compliance, and Cybersecurity announced today that, in cooperation with Bithumb — South Korea’s leading virtual asset exchange, it has helped a victim to recover approximately 20 Million KRW by timely identifying the suspect of a virtual asset fraud.
According to the Crypto Incident Response Center (CIRC), a recent service launched by Uppsala Security, the fraud case was reported by the victim in late February 2021. Uppsala Security’s investigators tracked and analyzed the flow of the victim’s reported digital assets in real time and confirmed that the stolen funds reached a Bithumb Exchange wallet.
In response, Uppsala Security notified the compliance department of Bithumb, its virtual asset AML partner, and the personnel in charge promptly double-checked the suspicious funds and related information so that a virtual asset tracking report could be timely provided to the victim.
The victim reported the damage to the police using the tracking report jointly confirmed by the two parties as evidence, and the cybersecurity team at the Daegu Bukbu Police Station, which received the case request, presented a search warrant to Bithumb to conduct a full-fledged investigation.
Bithumb completed the Know Your Customer (KYC) process for the suspected wallet address, which had been observed in advance in close cooperation with Uppsala Security, and delivered the information of the suspect’s account to the police. By doing so, the police quickly arrested the malicious actor and helped the victim recover all the initially lost funds.
According to Uppsala Security, the victim shared “I would like to express my gratitude to the cybersecurity team of the Daegu Bukbu Police Station for proactively conducting the investigation and to Bithumb Exchange and Uppsala Security for the close cooperation in helping me to quickly check the alleged wallet.”
“We were able to protect the customer assets through a quick and proactive cooperation with the blockchain security company Uppsala Security. We will continue to do our best to prevent this type of incidents and safely protect the customer assets through comparable joint efforts.“ said an official of the Bithumb Exchange team.
Patrick Kim, Founder & CEO of Uppsala Security, said „This specific case is really significant, as it is the first case that ended in the successful recovery of the stolen funds, with the help of Uppsala Security’s Crypto Incident Response Center (CIRC) service. It is our mission to quickly identify the wallet address of the suspects, fund flow and transactions as well as the targeted exchanges, but in this situation it would not have been possible to solve this case without the rapid cooperation and response of Bithumb and Daegu Bukbu Police Station.” He also added “As during April-June is the government’s special all-round crackdown on virtual asset fraud and crime in South Korea, I look forward to shaping a closer cooperative line between law enforcement agencies, exchanges, and Uppsala Security in the future.”
Uppsala Security offers virtual asset AML solutions to Samsung Blockchain Wallet users in 19 countries as well as to Bithumb, Coin&Coin Exchange, Danal Fintech, and Hexlant and has recently launched MCIS, a professional security control service for virtual asset companies.
About Bithumb
Founded in 2014, Bithumb is one of the biggest and most influential South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges, having 8 million registered users, 1M mobile app users and a current cumulative transaction volume has exceeded 1 trillion US dollars.
About Uppsala Security
Uppsala Security provides a suite of proven, multi-award-winning software tools and services called Sentinel Protocol powered by A.I, Machine Learning, and Blockchain technologies, that organizations can deploy for enabling: Cryptocurrency AML/CTF, Regulation Compliance Analytics, Risk Intelligence Analytics, Transaction Monitoring/Tracking, and Cybersecurity protecting cryptocurrencies and other digital assets from malicious attacks, scams and fraud.
