The mastermind behind India’s largest crypto heist has almost completely wiped out the tokens stolen from the platform. The July hack resulted in WazirX, once considered one of India’s leading crypto exchanges, losing more than $230 million in funds.
According to According to on-chain data, the hacker’s wallet, which held the stolen funds from the start, now holds just $6 million in Ethereum. Blockchain analytics firm Arkham previously traced these funds and noted that the stolen tokens were transferred through new wallets and then transferred via Tornado Cash, one of the infamous privacy services.
This money laundering operation has been ramping up in recent months. In August alone, nearly $50 million worth of tokens were transferred to Tornado Cash. However, this illicit activity increased significantly in September. The latest occurred on Wednesday morning, when 3,792 ETH worth approximately $10 million was transferred.
Tornado Cash lets users trade cryptocurrencies across blockchains and anonymizes wallet addresses in question. The Tornado Cash saga took a sharp turn in May when a Dutch court found one of its developers, Alexey Pertsev, guilty of money laundering and sentenced him to more than five years in prison.
The hack that really accelerated this chain of events was in July, when one of WazirX’s multisig wallets was compromised. The attack reportedly siphoned off over $100 million worth of SHIB tokens and $52 million worth of Ethereum and other assets. That staggering loss was over 45% of the exchange’s total reserves reported in June 2024.
