Headquartered in Hong Kong, Bitfinex, the leading cryptocurrency exchange has been ordered by the high court of the United Kingdom to confiscate Bitcoin holdings worth $860,000 that had been channelized to ransomware hackers while flowing through the exchange network.
According to the official reports released by the crypto exchange, the funds were a part of $1.2 million that was paid by a Canada-based insurance company. During the transaction, the firm became a victim of a malicious malware named BitPaymer. The illicit program locks computer systems and orders the users to pay a certain amount of Bitcoin in lieu of a decryption tool. After some time, the researchers managed to trace the funds. Their probing helped them to conclude that while some funds had been processed secretly by the scammers, BTC worth $860,000 had flown to Bitfinex for sale.
The UK High Court, on January 17, 2020, ordered Bitfinex to hand over the details about the scammers involved in the Bitcoin transaction to the regulatory authorities. The court has also demanded the exchange to freeze the funds if they are capable of doing so even now. Bitfinex has affirmed that it has cooperated with the authorities to the best of its capacity.
Bitfinex stated,
Interestingly, Bitfinex’s counsel has restrained itself from revealing the status of the Bitcoin assets involved in the scam. As per the report released by hard Fork, nearly $1.4 billion worth Bitcoin assets had been laundered through leading crypto exchanges like Binance and Huobi in 2019. In 2018, the US Department of Justice warned people not to interact with the BTC addresses of two Iranian cybercriminals.