What Happened: The Justice Department is moving to seize a range of cryptocurrencies, including stablecoins, Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), NFTs, and Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) Name Service domains—stored in self-custody wallets and Binance accounts. These assets are tied to a civil forfeiture complaint filed on June 5 in federal court in Washington, DC.

The DOJ claims that North Korean IT workers, under false identities, earned the crypto while working remotely for blockchain firms. The funds were originally frozen in April 2023 after Sim Hyon Sop, a China-based banker, was indicted for allegedly helping facilitate the money laundering scheme.

The Justice Department alleges that the North Korean IT workers used fake identification documents and other strategies to secure employment in multiple countries. After being paid—often in stablecoins like USDC and Tether—the workers allegedly employed money laundering methods such as chain hopping and converting tokens into NFTs to conceal the source of the funds.

Cybersecurity firm DTEX likened North Korea's cybercrime operations to a mafia organization, with Fortune 500 companies exploited to fund North Korea's nuclear program. Earlier in February 2025, North Korea’s Lazarus Group was suspected in a $1.4 billion crypto hack on Bybit.