Gangnam Police Precinct loses $1.45M from surrendered Bitcoin wallet, investigates
Published: 13 Feb. 2026, 17:24
![Seoul Gangnam Police Station in southern Seoul [YONHAP]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2026/02/13/7552ecf1-88c6-47f3-894a-a940e24a738a.jpg)
Seoul Gangnam Police Station in southern Seoul [YONHAP]
The Seoul Gangnam Police Precinct lost 22 bitcoins it had secured during an investigation and does not know when.
At Friday’s market price, the 22 missing tokens were worth about 2.1 billion won ($1.45 million). Police are investigating how the leak occurred and whether any insiders were involved.
The Gangnam station received the bitcoins as voluntary submissions around November 2021 while investigating a case and had kept them in custody, according to the National Police Agency and the Gyeonggi Bukbu Provincial Police Agency on Friday.
The investigation, however, was never fully closed and was later suspended. At some point after that, the bitcoins disappeared.
The precinct reportedly failed to notice the loss while the case was suspended, and only recently confirmed the bitcoins were missing during a nationwide audit of investigative agencies.
The National Police Agency launched the audit after an August 2025 case in which 320 bitcoins worth about 40 billion won went missing from the Gwangju District Prosecutors' Office.
When police headquarters identified the leak at the Gangnam precinct, the cold wallet — a USB-based physical storage device used to hold the bitcoins offline — was still in place, but only the bitcoins stored in it had been drained.
“We are still investigating the exact circumstances of the leak and any signs of insider involvement, so there is nothing specific we can provide at this stage,” a Gyeonggi Bukbu Provincial Police Agency official said.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY LEE GYU-RIM [[email protected]]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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