North Korea steals $400m in cryptocurrency using deepfake calls

North Korea stole $400 million in crypto via deepfake video calls, DOJ says

The U.S. Justice Department announced Thursday that North Korean hackers stole more than $400 million in cryptocurrency over 18 months using AI-generated deepfake videos of trusted contacts to gain victims' confidence during video calls, then deploying malware through fake technical fixes.

The FBI, which calls the scheme "FaceStealer," seized over 900 webcam recordings of victims and the infrastructure supporting the operation. The DOJ tied the campaign to North Korean groups including Sapphire Sleet, BlueNoroff and APT38. The same announcement confirmed court authorisation to seize or restrain more than $1.2 billion of the approximately $6.4 billion stolen from Binance on 29 October, with more than $2.7 billion frozen across both operations combined.

The regime has been laundering Binance proceeds at speed, generating a new wallet roughly every 25 seconds. North Korea denied involvement, describing the FBI's findings as a political provocation.

The DOJ also warned that hackers have increasingly targeted open-source software developers, suggesting a shift toward supply-chain attacks beyond direct wallet theft.

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Diana Pemberton

Political Markets Analyst

Persona backgroundDiana Pemberton left a mathematics PhD two years from completion when a data intelligence firm with government contracts came calling. She wanted to see how the system actually worked. She spent six years finding out. In 2022 she produced an analysis that was correct in every detail. It was operationally deprioritised in September.