In an announcement to publicize the results of recent raids on 125 tax evaders, which resulted in the confiscation of around $5.6 million worth of crypto, South Korea’s National Tax Service made a dunce-like mistake. The agency released photos of a Ledger hardware wallet for crypto storage on February 27 — but failed to redact a handwritten note visible in the shots that exposed the accompanying wallet’s recovery or seed phrase. The phrase allows anybody to circumvent the need for the physical Ledger device and initiate transfers. Sure enough, it didn’t take long for an anonymous opportunist to deplete the wallet, worth around $4.8 million at the time of the post — an embarrassing slip-up that directly undermined the cops’ efforts to clamp down on tax evasion.
According to local business newspaper Maeil Business, the anonymous thief withdrew four million Pre-Retogeum tokens, an obscure crypto token linked to energy trading, to their own wallet in three transactions after using a small amount of Ethereum to pay for the transaction. The token is listed on a single exchange and has a market cap of just $12 million, meaning that turning four million of them into cash could be difficult. CoinMarketCap data suggests the thieves have yet to attempt laundering their bounty.
The National Tax Service has since issued an apology following the faux pas. “There is no excuse for this incident, and it is the fault of the National Tax Service,” the March 1 document reads. Worse yet, the news comes less than two months after prosecutors in Gwangju, South Korea, were investigated after losing a “significant” portion of seized Bitcoin linked to a phishing incident.
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