ZachXBT Goes Undercover in Lazarus Group-Linked Money Laundering Ring: Invested Nearly $3.5 Million in OTC Trades with Counterparty Using the Alias Jimmy Green

2026-10-05 20:28 (UTC+8)

Odaily News: On-chain detective ZachXBT posted on X that he once posed as a client to infiltrate a criminal group suspected of laundering money for the North Korea-backed hacker organization Lazarus Group, and assisted in freezing funds related to the 2025 Bybit attack.

ZachXBT stated that after Bybit suffered a $1.5 billion attack in February 2025, he discovered that more than 15 accounts in public Telegram and Discord groups were seeking help processing transactions related to the stolen funds. He subsequently contacted one of the Telegram users using the alias "Jimmy Green" and built trust through multiple transactions. According to his disclosure, on March 6, 2025, he transferred $3.497 million in USDC to an Ethereum address for a USDC-to-TRON-chain USDT exchange transaction with the counterparty. The source of gas funds for that address can be traced back to the Bybit attack funds and was publicly flagged as a Bybit attack blacklisted address.

ZachXBT said that in subsequent communications, the counterparty revealed that their team had been involved in processing the stolen Bybit funds and disclosed in advance that the funds would be moved across chains including Solana. By matching transaction timing, amounts, and on-chain data, he identified a wallet cluster involving more than $12 million in Bybit attack funds, with fund paths spanning multiple networks including BTC→ETH→SOL→TRON. Approximately 442,000 USDT was frozen by Tether, and the group also attempted to launder money through Uniswap liquidity pools and low-liquidity tokens. Additionally, the counterparty disclosed having helped other clients process approximately $3 million in fraudulent proceeds, and ZachXBT traced the related funds to wallets associated with the sanctioned Huione Guarantee.

ZachXBT revealed that in this investigation, he initially invested $3.497 million and bore a loss risk of approximately 5% per transaction. The intelligence ultimately obtained was provided to relevant investigative agencies and law enforcement authorities at the earliest opportunity. Since 2022, he has assisted in freezing over $75 million in funds related to North Korea-linked incidents.