Police arrested two suspects accused of leaking virtual asset that had been kept at the Seoul Gangnam Police Station.
The Gyeonggi Northern Police Agency said on the 25th that it arrested two people, including a person in their 40s, on suspicion of leaking bitcoin that the Gangnam Police Station had seized and was keeping.
They are accused of siphoning off 22 bitcoins (then worth about 2.1 billion won) that police had received voluntarily and were keeping during a criminal investigation in Nov. 2021.
It was reported that when the leak of bitcoin to the outside was discovered, the "cold wallet (offline electronic wallet)" in the form of a USB remained intact, but only the bitcoin stored inside had disappeared.
The Korean National Police Agency had been checking the status of virtual asset managed by local police stations after news broke last month that 320 bitcoins (market value 31.2 billion won) kept by the Gwangju District Prosecutors' Office had disappeared, and this fact came to light in the process.
A police official said, "We are currently investigating how the virtual asset was leaked and plan to disclose the investigation results step by step later."