Thai Police, Elliptic Trace $520M in Crypto Fraud Across 32 Chains

Elliptic had already flagged about $234 million of the flagged transactions in its own systems before the police inquiry began. That means nearly half the suspicious volume was corroborated by existing intelligence.

The investigation also traced connections to North Korean operatives who allegedly targeted Thai victims as part of a significant theft, Elliptic said. The broader pattern points to organized crime infrastructure operating out of scam centers in Cambodia and Myanmar.

Criminals used decentralized exchanges and cross-chain bridges to move funds. Each hop from one chain to another makes the connection harder to trace without specialized tools.

The gap between $520 million in suspicious transactions and $14 million in documented victim losses shows most of the volume is laundering infrastructure. The money moves through layers of wallets and chains designed to obscure origins.

The assets most used in these schemes – USDT, Ethereum and Bitcoin – are the most liquid and widely held tokens in crypto. Any regulatory response would likely focus on exchanges' transaction monitoring requirements, a potential source of short-term volatility. Several jurisdictions, including Ireland and the EU through MiCAR, have already tightened obligations around wallet screening and suspicious activity reporting.