The Gwangju District Prosecutor’s Office liquidated 320.8 bitcoins for $21.5 million, after a hacker had stolen them through a phishing attack and then returned them.
The Gwangju District Prosecutor’s Office in South Korea has sold 320.8 seized bitcoins and transferred 31.6 billion Korean won (approximately $21.5 million) to the national treasury. The sale took place in multiple tranches over 11 days, from February 24 to March 6, according to the Chosun Ilbo newspaper.
The bitcoins had originally been confiscated during an operation against an international gambling platform active from 2018 to 2021, whose operators had concealed illicit proceeds by converting them into bitcoin. The case took an unexpected turn in August 2025, however, when officials responsible for custodying the funds fell victim to a phishing site, losing the entire amount of seized bitcoins. The theft was not discovered until December 2025.
In February 2026, the hacker spontaneously returned the 320.8 BTC to the authorities’ wallet. The prosecutor’s office stated it had blocked the access to major liquidation channels before the funds were returned. The perpetrator of the attack remains at large and investigations are ongoing.
The Gwangju incident is not an isolated case. Following this episode, a nationwide internal investigation revealed that the Seoul Gangnam Police Station had lost 22 BTC stored in a USB cold wallet since 2021. Authorities are evaluating the possibility of internal involvement, as the physical cold wallet does not appear to have ever been stolen.
South Korea’s National Tax Service also came under scrutiny after inadvertently exposing the recovery phrase of a wallet in a public report. Following the disclosure, 4 million Pre-Retogeum (PRTG) tokens, theoretically valued at $4.8 million, were transferred from the wallet to an unidentified address. The repeated incidents have sparked public criticism over the poor technical competence and the absence of standardized security protocols among the country’s law enforcement agencies and tax authorities.
