Security News > 2021 > December > US returns $154 Million in bitcoins stolen by Sony employee
The United States has taken legal action to seize and return over $154 million purportedly stolen from Sony Life Insurance Company Ltd, a SONY subsidiary, by an employee in a textbook business email compromise attack.
"According to the government's complaint, Rei Ishii, an employee of Sony Life Insurance Company Ltd. in Tokyo, allegedly diverted the $154 million when the company attempted to transfer funds between its financial accounts," the Justice Dept said today.
According to court documents, Ishii switched the transfer address for a Sony Life transaction to use a Silvergate Bank account under his control.
Ishii later converted the stolen funds into more than 3879 bitcoins via A Coinbase set up to automatically transfer all added funds to an offline cryptocurrency cold wallet with a Bitcoin address of bc1q7rhc02dvhmlfu8smywr9mayhdph85jlpf6paqu.
After converting the money to cryptocurrency, Ishii also tried persuading his supervisor and several Sony Life executives not to help investigators by emailing them a ransom note typed in English and Japanese.
On December 1, following an investigation in collaboration with Japanese law enforcement authorities, the FBI seized the 3879.16242937 BTC in Ishii's wallet after obtaining the private key, which made it possible to transfer all the bitcoins to the FBI's bitcoin wallet.