US Treasury Department imposes sanctions against members of the LockBit hacker group

Tether has blacklisted these addresses

21.02.2024 - 11:30

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2 min

What’s new? The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has identified the crypto wallets of the LockBit hacker group and imposed sanctions against individuals associated with them. According to OFAC and the US DOJ, they are part of the LockBit group accused of stealing more than $120 million from more than 2000 victims over the past few years. Tether, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin, has also blacklisted these addresses, experts at blockchain audit firm PeckShield said.

Information on the OFAC’s website

Source: Twitter.com

What else is known? The regulator imposed sanctions against two Russian citizens, Artur Sungatov and Ivan Kondratiev, and 10 bitcoin and Ethereum addresses associated with them (none of which had funds at the time of publication).

As part of an international campaign dubbed “Operation Kronos,” the US Department of Justice, Europol, the UK National Crime Agency, and agencies from several other countries blocked LockBit’s website and a number of pages. Law enforcement agencies announced that they will distribute decryption keys to victims, allowing them to regain access to their devices.

According to a press release from Europol, more than 200 cryptocurrency accounts linked to LockBit have been frozen, and US, UK, and EU authorities have seized various parts of the extortion group’s infrastructure.