Cybernews reports that North Korean hacking collective Lazarus Group was observed to have been leveraging meme coins to launder $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency assets stolen from an attack against major Dubai-based cryptocurrency exchange Bybit Technology, which is regarded as the largest single cryptocurrency heist yet.
After sending 60 SOL to an anonymous wallet, Lazarus Group leveraged the Solana meme coin launchpad Pump.fun to deploy the QinShihuang token for laundering activities, said on-chain analyst Atlas in a series of posts on X.
"By luring real liquidity from Pump.fun users, they mixed stolen funds with legitimate market activity, making detection harder. Once enough liquidity was secured, they dumped the tokens, cashed out, and fragmented funds across multiple wallets," Atlas noted.
Lazarus Group was also reported by cybersecurity researcher ZachXBT to have distributed several meme coins on Pump.fun.
"Fifteen hrs ago, I made 920+ addresses receiving funds tied to the Bybit hack public and noticed a person laundering for Lazarus Group previously launched meme coins via Pump.fun," said ZachXBT, who found the stolen funds to be redirected to several exchanges and services.
