French cooperative bank Arkéa suffered at least $133 million in fraud, with funds converted into cryptocurrency assets

French crypto journalist and co-founder of The Big Whale, Grégory Raymond, stated that the French cooperative bank Crédit Mutuel Arkéa suffered at least $133 million in fraud, with funds being transferred to a crypto trading platform and then moved. This information was disclosed overnight by on-chain investigator ZachXBT, and Raymond indicated that he had been following the matter since the previous day.

Raymond cited sources close to the case, stating that the transferred assets were not crypto assets directly held by the bank, but rather fiat currency, which was then converted into crypto assets for transfer. The source described this method as unprecedented and characterized it as an organized network relying on a large number of mule accounts, with funds flowing to multiple trading platform accounts, including Crypto.com. Raymond contacted the bank around 6 PM Paris time the previous evening, and they responded that they could not confirm the relevant information at this stage and did not provide further comments.

According to the anonymous source, Arkéa realized its involvement later and was unprepared to respond. Raymond wrote that due to the bank's lack of official confirmation, the trading platforms and stablecoin issuers failed to freeze the funds in time. ZachXBT pointed out on Sunday that an unnamed European entity had transferred over $106 million in USDC and USDT, and on Tuesday raised the estimated amount to $133 million, with some transfers occurring after the initial warning. ZachXBT expressed high confidence in ruling out the involvement of North Korea's Lazarus group and estimated that if the incident had been reported quickly, over $30 million could have been frozen.