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The U.S. Department of Justice has reportedly launched a criminal probe into the alleged hack that drained nearly $400 million out of FTX-controlled wallets the night the Bahamas-based exchange filed for bankruptcy.
Bloomberg first reported the news on Tuesday, citing persons familiar with the case.
Between Nov. 11 and the early hours of Nov. 12, massive outflows of cryptocurrencies began moving out of FTX and FTX US’s wallets. Multiple FTX employees told Twitter sleuth ZachXBT that they didn't recognize the transfers.
More than an hour after the alleged hack was initiated, ftx general counsel ryne miller tweeted that his company was "investigating abnormalities with wallet movements" and later pinned a message in ftx's official telegram medium: "ftx was hacked. Ftx applications are malicious software. Delete them. Chat is up and running. Don't go to the FTX site because it could upload Trojan horses."
The official FTX Twitter account has been silent over the course of the pandemic. In the afternoon of Nov. 12, FTX CEO John Jay Ray III confirmed the hack through a statement posted via Miller’s Twitter account, and said they were in contact with law enforcement.
The criminal investigation is separate from the case of defrauding disgraced former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, the Bloomberg report says, This also allowed the authorities to freeze some of the stolen money.
Blockchain experts have pointed to several clues that the hacker was an FTX insider, including the simultaneous hacks of the FTX and FTX US websites, the suspect’s access to multiple cold wallets and the use of a personal Kraken account to withdraw gas fees for at least one transaction.
