header-langage
简体中文
繁體中文
English
Tiếng Việt
한국어
日本語
ภาษาไทย
Türkçe
Scan to Download the APP

Korean Tax Agency Accidentally Leaks Wallet Mnemonic, Suspected Cause of $4.8M Crypto Assets Theft

2026-02-27 11:35

BlockBeats News, February 27th. According to South Korean media, in the news material released by the South Korean National Tax Service on the results of the "High Amount, Habitual Tax Defaulter On-Site Inspection," the mnemonic phrase of the seized cryptocurrency wallet was mistakenly fully exposed without any mosaic processing, leading to suspected hackers transferring the related assets based on it.


It was reported that on February 26th, the National Tax Service released information stating that during on-site inspections of 124 tax defaulters, approximately 8.1 billion South Korean won in assets were seized in total. Among them, "Case 3" involved the seizure of 4 cryptocurrency hardware wallet USBs from a defaulter's residence drawer. The issue lies in the fact that in the on-site photos released with the press release, a paper with the wallet recovery mnemonic phrase was clearly visible next to the Ledger hardware wallet device.


Blockchain explorer Etherscan's on-chain records show that shortly after the mnemonic phrase was exposed (early on the 27th), around 4 million PRTG tokens were transferred in three transactions to unknown addresses from the wallet. Before the transfers, the related address first received a small amount of ETH as gas fees. The transferred assets were valued at approximately 4.8 million USD (about 640 million South Korean won).


Some scholars criticized this action as equivalent to "publicly revealing the wallet key," exposing the law enforcement's fundamental lack of knowledge in managing digital asset security.

举报 Correction/Report
Correction/Report
Submit
Add Library
Visible to myself only
Public
Save
Choose Library
Add Library
Cancel
Finish