- A Japanese court has ordered that XEM tokens and Bitcoin relating to the Coincheck hack of 2018 be ringfenced and frozen
- The owner, who allegedly bought the stolen XEM tokens on the dark web following the hack, was arrested in March
- The Coincheck hack saw $530 million worth of XEM taken from the exchange
A Japanese court has ordered that a company thought to own a proportion of the 500 million XEM tokens stolen in the Coincheck hack of 2018 has access to its wallets revoked and the assets seized. The company is owned by Takayoshi Doi, one of the accused recipients of the stolen XEM tokens who was arrested in March this year alongside another recipient Masaki Kitamoto, who has already admitted to the charges.
Coincheck Hack Saw $530 Million Stolen
The Coincheck hack saw $530 million worth of XEM tokens stolen on January 26, 2018, with the coins taken from a single hot wallet on the exchange. The 500 million coins were sent immediately to the dark web where they were exchanged for Bitcoin at a cut price, at which point NEM blockchain analysts thought they had seen the last of them.
However, an unspecified amount came back on the radar when they arrived at an unnamed exchange in 2019. The sellers of these tainted tokens were identified as Doi and Kitamoto, and the pair were arrested in March this year on suspicion of profiting from the proceeds of crime. Kitamoto was said at the time of the arrest to have admitted his part in the plan and profited to the tune of $19 million.
First Ever Such Order by Japanese Courts
According to the Japan Times, Doi sent his profits to wallets connected to a company he started, where some still remain, along with $46,000 worth of Bitcoin he has made from the sale of the Coincheck hack tokens. The arrest of the pair was partly conducted so that they weren’t able to sell or otherwise move any of the remaining NEM tokens or proceeds of their sale, and the Tokyo District Court has issued a protective order in advance of confiscation of cryptocurrency from Doi’s company wallets.
The order is thought to represent the first such order in Japan. If Doi is found guilty, the ringfenced NEM from the Coincheck hack will be confiscated. Conversely if he is found not guilty it will be released back to him.
