A tax agency once lost $4.8 MILLION because it accidentally published the private keys in a press release
On February 26 the South Korean National Tax Service wrapped up an enforcement against 124 high value tax delinquents, walking away with 8.1 billion won in seized crypto
The agency then published a press release showcasing the confiscated assets.
Among the photos were the seized Ledger hardware wallets with the handwritten seed phrases sitting right next to them. Within hours, one of the exposed wallets was drained
On chain data shows the thief first deposited a small amount of ETH to cover gas fees, then moved 4 million PRTG tokens worth $4.8 million to a fresh address in three transactions
A blockchain professor at Hansung University traced the transactions and called the leak "an advertisement inviting people to take your money"
The NTS deleted the press release, but the pattern around it is even worse
In January, prosecutors in Gwangju lost over $48 million in seized Bitcoin to phishing
A month later a Seoul police station discovered 22 Bitcoin seized back in 2021 had vanished from a cold wallet, because the suspects kept a copy of the recovery phrase and simply took the evidence back
Three crypto custody failures in two months involving more than $50 million in seized assets
Seoul's answer was a national audit of every government held wallet and a plan to hand seized crypto to private custodians, an admission that the state cannot even keep its own funds safe