The U.S. Department of Justice is taking a gape into the alleged hack that saw $370 million drained from crypto exchange FTX hours after it filed for monetary catastrophe.

An particular particular person conscious of the case instructed Bloomberg on Tuesday that the DOJ has launched a criminal probe into the FTX hack. The actual person talked about that U.S. authorities hold managed to freeze some of the stolen funds, albeit a exiguous part of the total quantity.

The criminal probe is separate from the host of fraud charges brought by the DOJ in opposition to dilapidated FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

The hacking match in itself has roused a if truth be told intensive quantity of suspicion from trade watchers. The same old consensus amongst blockchain security specialists who analyzed the circulation of funds is that the hack became as soon as seemingly the work of an FTX insider.

Dyma Budorin, co-founding father of blockchain security agency Hacken, instructed CoinDesk final month that the hacker had access to your complete chilly storage wallets that they exploited. The hacker also passe a KYC-verified story on crypto exchange Kraken to fund one in every of their wallets – one thing Budorin described as “a tiring mistake.”

The speculation that the hack became as soon as an internal job is one that Bankman-Fried apparently is of the same opinion with. In aan Nov. 30 interview with Tiffany Fong, Bankman-Fried talked about he had “a moderately decent sense” that the hack became as soon as the work of an FTX employee, or somebody who set aside in malware on an employee’s pc.

Many in the crypto neighborhood believe that the hack became as soon as orchestrated by Bankman-Fried himself, seemingly with the support of co-workers working below his route.

“Doubtlessly the same guy who wrote codes to make sure a margin name didn’t happen for sure accounts,” tweeted one particular person on Tuesday.