The $4.8M Press Release: South Korea’s Tax Agency Leaks Private Keys
In a staggering security blunder, South Korea’s National Tax Service (NTS) accidentally facilitated a multi-million dollar crypto heist by publishing a photo of a seized wallet's seed phrase.
$BNB The Failure
To showcase a crackdown on tax evaders on February 26, 2026, the NTS released a series of "victory" photos. One image featured a seized Ledger hardware wallet sitting next to an unredacted, handwritten sheet of paper containing the 24-word recovery phrase.
$BTC The Theft
Within hours of the press release, blockchain analysts watched the wallet drain in real-time:
The Loot: Approximately 4 million PRTG tokens.
The Value: Estimated at 6.4 billion won (~$4.8 million USD).
The Method: The thief sent a small amount of ETH to the wallet to cover transaction fees before sweeping the assets.
$ETH The Irony
The incident occurred just as the NTS launched a specialized 2026 unit to track digital asset tax evasion. This "Crypto 101" failure—sharing the master key to a vault—proves that legal authority doesn't equal technical literacy.
The Catch: Because the stolen PRTG token has low liquidity, the hacker may struggle to cash out the full $4.8 million without crashing the token's price.
#SecurityAlert