A British investigative firm successfully located stolen funds and persuaded the High Court of Singapore to permanently label the wallets holding those funds with its order.
The Singapore High Court has granted permission to the financial investigation firm, Intelligent Sanctuary (iSanctuary), to link nonfungible tokens (NFTs) containing a legal document to cold wallets related to a cyberattack, as reported by iSanctuary and local news sources in the United Kingdom.
A globally applicable freeze order issued by the court was converted into soulbound NFTs and affixed to the wallets in question
These NFTs won’t block transactions involving the wallets, but they will serve as a warning to counterparties and exchanges that the wallets have been linked to a cyberattack. Moreover, iSanctuary claims to have developed a method for tracing funds leaving these wallets, thanks to the NFTs. These NFTs will remain permanently attached to the wallets.
iSanctuary recently shared a success story on its website involving a businessperson who lost $3 million in cryptocurrency assets. With the assistance of iSanctuary, the stolen funds were successfully traced. The firm’s senior investigator presented both on-chain and off-chain evidence to the Singapore High Court, leading to the issuance of a worldwide injunction, a first for the court. iSanctuary’s financial and crypto investigators identified a set of cold wallets holding the ill-gotten gains, and their innovative approach using NFTs was approved by the court.
While no additional details were disclosed, iSanctuary mentioned Mintology, an app developed by Singaporean NFT studio Mintable, as the creator of the NFTs. This connection was indirectly confirmed by Mintable founder Zach Burks in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
On October 17
The Straits Times reported that the case was connected to a stolen private key, with Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchanges allegedly being implicated in laundering the proceeds of the hack, carried out by individuals who were purportedly associated with Singapore. The case is described as spanning multiple countries, including Singapore, Spain, Ireland, Britain, and several other European nations.
The newspaper cited iSanctuary’s founder, Jonathan Benton, who stated, “This is a game changer; it can happen in hours if needed. We can serve on wallets and start to police the blockchain, identify those holding illicit assets, serve civil or criminal orders, even red flags.”
