An attacker exploited Kelp DAO's LayerZero-powered cross-chain bridge to drain 116,500 rsETH — approximately $293 million and 18% of the token's circulating supply. The forged cross-chain message triggered the largest DeFi exploit of 2026, a $5.4 billion withdrawal panic at Aave, and contagion across at least nine other protocols. LayerZero has preliminarily attributed the attack to North Korea's Lazarus Group.

FinCEN has announced that its Rapid Response Program — which coordinates with financial institutions to freeze fraudulent wire transfers before funds leave the banking system — has interdicted nearly $2 billion on behalf of US cyber-enabled fraud victims. The programme works by alerting receiving banks to freeze suspected fraud proceeds within hours of a victim report.

Drift Protocol, the largest decentralised perpetual futures exchange on Solana, has been drained of approximately $285 million in a 12-minute attack that exploited compromised administrative keys, a fabricated collateral token, and pre-signed transactions. The attack, attributed with medium confidence to DPRK-linked actors, was the culmination of a six-month social engineering campaign.

Federal grand juries have indicted ten executives and employees from four cryptocurrency market-making firms — Gotbit, Vortex, Antier, and Contrarian — for orchestrating wash trading schemes that artificially inflated token prices and volumes. The charges followed an FBI undercover operation that created its own cryptocurrency tokens as bait. Three defendants were extradited from Singapore.

A federal judge in California has sentenced Daren Li — a dual citizen of China and St. Kitts and Nevis — to the statutory maximum of 20 years in prison for his role in a $73 million cryptocurrency investment scam operated from scam centres in Cambodia. Li was sentenced in absentia after cutting off his ankle monitoring device and disappearing in December 2025.

A federal RICO prosecution has produced nine guilty pleas in a social engineering conspiracy that stole $263 million in Bitcoin from a single victim in Washington, DC. The gang — which originated on online gaming platforms — used stolen databases, social engineering calls, and residential burglaries targeting hardware wallets to steal cryptocurrency, then laundered it through $40,000-to-$80,000-a-month rental homes.

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has been found guilty on all 25 counts of abuse of power, criminal breach of trust, and money laundering in his final 1MDB trial. The court imposed a 15-year sentence and fines totalling RM 11.4 billion ($2.82 billion) for the theft of sovereign wealth fund assets.

Do Kwon has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for fraud charges stemming from the May 2022 collapse of Terra/Luna, which wiped out approximately $40 billion and triggered a cascade of crypto insolvencies. The sentence follows extradition from Montenegro and a guilty plea to multiple counts.

Samourai Wallet co-founders Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill have been sentenced to five and four years respectively for conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business. Their CoinJoin-based Bitcoin mixer processed over $2 billion in transactions, including $237 million in directly traceable proceeds from darknet markets and CSAM sites.

A Manhattan jury has convicted Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business, finding the crypto mixer processed over $1 billion in identifiable criminal proceeds. The jury deadlocked on the more serious money laundering and sanctions charges, producing a split verdict in one of crypto's most consequential cases.

Celsius Network founder Alex Mashinsky has been sentenced to 12 years in federal prison for securities and commodities fraud. Mashinsky deceived depositors about the safety of their funds while personally selling $48 million in CEL tokens. The collapse in 2022 trapped $4.7 billion in customer assets.

Russian cryptocurrency exchange Garantex has been seized in a coordinated multinational law enforcement operation, with co-founder Aleksej Besciokov arrested in India. The exchange processed an estimated $96 billion in lifetime volume, with investigators finding that 70 to 82 percent of its transactions were linked to sanctioned entities, ransomware groups, or illicit finance.