In the summer of 2025, prosecutors in the city of Gwangju became victims of a fraudulent internet resource during a check of confiscated cryptocurrencies.
The inspection of confiscated crypto assets conducted by the Gwangju District Prosecutor's Office revealed a loss of funds, which became known in the summer of 2025.
According to one source, the prosecutors accidentally visited a fake website while checking bitcoins, while the passwords to the cryptocurrency wallets were stored on USB drives. This method of storage does not meet modern security standards, which require data to be stored securely and the use of multi-signatures for transferring funds.
A representative of the prosecutor's office confirmed the loss of cryptocurrency but refused to disclose specific amounts of damage and the number of lost coins.
The agency is taking steps to recover the funds, although, as a rule, this becomes extremely difficult if the stolen assets have been transferred to external wallets.
Two weeks before the incident occurred, the Supreme Court of South Korea issued a ruling, published on January 9, which confirmed the legality of seizing bitcoins stored on cryptocurrency exchanges, according to the Criminal Procedure Code.
The case involved 55.6 BTC, with a total value of about 600 million won, which were seized from a money laundering suspect.
This is not the first case related to bitcoins in Gwangju. In November 2021, during a police operation to seize funds from a gambling site, 1476 BTC went missing.
This case is still under consideration by the Supreme Court. The current phishing incident is a separate matter involving prosecutors, not the police.
