The United States Treasury Division Business office of Overseas Belongings Handle (OFAC) announced Friday that it was sanctioning cryptocurrency mixer Blender.io for its purpose in laundering proceeds from the hacking of Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge. North Korean point out-sponsored hackers Lazarus Team have been recognized as the perpetrators of the attack. 

Treasury Below Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson stated in a assertion:

“Today, for the 1st time at any time, Treasury is sanctioning a virtual currency mixer. […] We are using action versus illicit monetary exercise by the DPRK and will not enable point out-sponsored thievery and its income-laundering enablers to go unanswered.”

Below the sanctions, all Blender.io house in the United States or in the possession of U.S. people is blocked and should be described to OFAC.

According to OFAC, Blender.io processed $20.5 million out of about $620 million stolen from the Vietnam-dependent enjoy-to-receive game in the variety of around 173,600 Ether (ETH) and 25.5 million USD Coin (USDC). OFAC also uncovered through its investigation that Blender.io experienced facilitated money laundering for Russia-linked ransomware teams such as Trickbot, Conti, Ryuk, Sodinokibi and Gandcrab. The Blender.io website was offline at the time of producing.

The Treasury company also extra the addresses of 4 wallets applied by Lazarus Team to launder some of the stolen resources to its Listing of Specifically Designated Nationals and Blocked Individuals.

Related: US Treasury Dept sanctions 3 Ethereum addresses allegedly joined to North Korea

There has been a safety breach on the Ronin Community.https://t.co/ktAp9w5qpP

— Ronin (@Ronin_Network) March 29, 2022

The Ronin Bridge hack took location on March 23, but it was only discovered the subsequent week. The bridge was accessed by way of sport developer Sky Mavis. That corporation had been indefinitely whitelisted after supporting process a surge in transactions. Sky Mavis raised $150 million to reimburse consumers who dropped dollars in the exploit, and Binance was able to get better $5.8 million of the money from 86 accounts. Lazarus Team was identified as the hackers by OFAC in mid-April.