The National Tax Service of South Korea accidentally published the seed phrases for three cryptocurrency wallets, leading to the theft of 4 million PRTG tokens worth approximately $4.8 million. Local media reported this incident.
The agency included an image of confiscated Ledger hardware wallets for digital asset storage along with their mnemonic phrases in an official press release.
Jae-Woo Cho, an associate professor at the Hansung University Blockchain Research Center, noted that the perpetrator exploited this information to transfer the assets to their own Ethereum address.
“Revealing crucial mnemonic information in a press release for public viewing is akin to advertising a call to take your money. The tax authorities' lack of basic understanding of virtual assets has prevented the recovery of billions of won in public funds,” the expert stated.
According to CoinGecko, the price of PRTG even rose from $1.2 to $1.23 within a day. The analytics service does not provide any data on the token's market supply or capitalization. The only market listed is the MEXC exchange, with a trading volume of $338 over the last 24 hours.
One commentator noted that the wallet accumulating the tokens received funds from the exchanges Bithumb, Bittrex, and Korbit. User verification data on these platforms may help identify the individual.
0xc28651F91B129138AE6d75F4c00C97bCA9486c12
— zin (@periagoge1) February 27, 2026
이 지갑주소 빗썸에서 돈받은내역있는 지갑이네요 ㄷㄷ pic.twitter.com/7MdIlIKMjh
A Harsh Lesson for Korean Authorities
In January, prosecutors in Gwangju began investigating the disappearance of bitcoins worth $47.7 million. The loss was discovered during a routine audit of confiscated assets.
In February, a hacker voluntarily returned all 320.8 BTC to the agency. The perpetrator was unable to withdraw the funds as law enforcement had managed to block them on an unnamed centralized exchange.
That same month, authorities launched an investigation into the disappearance of 22 BTC seized in 2021. The coins were stored in a cold wallet at the Gangnam police station in Seoul.
The absence of the bitcoins was revealed during a nationwide audit of the storage of seized digital assets, which began following the incident in Gwangju.
Additionally, the financial regulator in Korea opened an investigation in February against the Bithumb exchange regarding an erroneous distribution of 620,000 BTC to users.