Bitcoin soared on Tuesday to an all-time high reaching the $50,000 milestone at $50.602.
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Federal authorities said Wednesday that three North Korean computer programmers have been indicted for conducting a series of cyberattacks to steal and extort more than $1.3 billion in cash and cryptocurrency from financial institutions and companies.
The programmers also are accused of creating and deploying “multiple malicious cryptocurrency applications, and to develop and fraudulently market a blockchain platform,” according to a Department of Justice press release.
At the same time, authorities announced that a Canadian-American citizen agreed to plead guilty to charges in a money-laundering scheme, and admitted to helping the indicted North Koreans “cash-out” their “cyber-enabled bank heist.”
Officials said the charges laid out Wednesday expands a case from 2018 that detailed the cyberattack on Sony Pictures and the creation of the ransomware known as WannaCry.
“North Korea’s operatives, using keyboards rather than guns, stealing digital wallets of cryptocurrency instead of sacks of cash, are the world’s leading bank robbers,” said Assistant Attorney General John Demers of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
Tracy Wilkinson, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, said, “The scope of the criminal conduct by the North Korean hackers was extensive and long-running, and the range of crimes they have committed is staggering.”
Wilkinson also said, “The conduct detailed in the indictment are the acts of a criminal nation-state that has stopped at nothing to extract revenge and obtain money to prop up its regime.”
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