ZachXBT says $7 million of OG Bitcoiner's stolen crypto frozen with help of Binance

Onchain sleuth ZachXBT said on Friday that about $7 million of the roughly $330 million worth of BTC allegedly stolen from an "OG Bitcoiner" early this week has been frozen with the help of other investigators and Binance's security team.

ZachXBT first flagged on Sunday that a "suspicious" transfer of approximately 3,520 bitcoin (worth about $330 million at the time) signaled that a large sum of crypto had been pilfered from a long-time bitcoin holder's wallet. The stolen funds were subsequently laundered through more than six exchanges and converted to privacy coin Monero, which jumped in price as a result.

On Wednesday, ZachXBT said that the victim of an alleged theft — who the investigator has called an "OG Bitcoiner" — is an "elderly" person in the U.S. and that they fell victim to a "social engineering theft." Social engineering thefts are generally phishing scams.

On Friday, ZachXBT also said they had identified two suspects. "Two suspects in the $330 million heist include 'Nina/Mo' a Somalian who operates a call scam centre in Camden, UK and an accomplice “W0rk” who assisted with the site/call," ZachXBT posted to X. "They have since deleted social media accounts."

The $330 million theft ranks as one of the largest single heists in the history of crypto.

Besides Binance's security team lending a hand, ZachXBT said Cryptoforensic Investigators and the private investigator known as tanuki42 on X had helped with the freezing of the roughly $7 million.