The U.S. Department of Justice has seized more than $1 million in cryptocurrency from the BlackSuit ransomware gang.
The funds were traced to a ransom payment made in April 2023, when a victim paid 49.3 Bitcoin for a decryption tool. At the time, the payment was worth around $1.45 million.
Investigators tracked the funds through several cryptocurrency exchanges before freezing them at a platform that cooperated with law enforcement. This action comes shortly after Operation Checkmate, an international effort that took down BlackSuit’s dark web servers and extortion websites.
BlackSuit, along with its predecessors Royal and Quantum, has targeted over 450 organizations in the U.S. since 2022, including hospitals, schools, and critical infrastructure. Authorities say the group has collected hundreds of millions of dollars in ransom payments.
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