Multichain developers stopped the project
Date: 2023-07-15 Author: Karina Ziganova Categories: BLOCKCHAIN, CRYPTO PAYMENTS
Representatives of the blockchain project confirmed the involvement of the head of Multichain in the incident around the theft of more than $200 million, but do not know its whereabouts
Cross-chain project Multichain (formerly. Anyswap) stops its work. The developers of the project announced this on Twitter. According to the Multichain team, Chinese law enforcement agencies arrested the project's CEO, Zhao Jun, back on May 21, 2023
The developers also found out that the infrastructure of the project was tied to Jun's personal accounts, which paralyzed the project after its disappearance. Multichain claims that law enforcement confiscated all of Jun's equipment, including hardware wallets.
"Since the establishment of the project, all operating facilities and investments have been under the control of Zhao Jun. This also means that all the team's funds and access to the servers are with Zhao Jun and the police," the project said.
Later, Multichain recorded an unauthorized transfer of funds from the project's on-chain wallet. Having contacted Zhao Jun's sister in Multichain, they found out from her words that there was a certain IP address from the Chinese city of Kunming behind the transfer. A couple of days later, Jun's sister transferred $200 million of client money in cryptocurrency to a wallet under her control, according to Multichain.
Why the suspect's sister did not transfer the cryptocurrency to the team's wallets is unclear. However, after the transfer of $ 200 million, the Chinese authorities also detained Jun's sister. What exactly was the reason for the arrest is unclear. Her current whereabouts are unknown. Due to the lack of additional information, Multichain decided to stop the project.
Earlier, Chainalysis said that the Chinese authorities confiscated about $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency associated with Multichain. According to analysts, it is Jun who is behind the incident. The version of the fraud was previously confirmed by the CEO of the Fantom protocol, Michael Kong. He noted that transferring funds from Multichain wallets is not like a regular hack. . This is due to the fact that the cryptocurrency that was transferred to the wallets of the alleged attackers was not withdrawn to third-party wallets or mixers to obfuscate surveillance.
