French Bank Named as Alleged Target in $133M Crypto Theft
Security & Exploits ·
Onchain sleuth ZachXBT identifies Crédit Mutuel Arkéa as the probable victim of a multi-day crypto exploit, saying delayed disclosure allowed over $30 million to escape freezing.
Investigator ZachXBT has publicly tied French banking group Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, which holds roughly $235 billion in assets, to a crypto theft he now estimates at more than $133 million, according to Decrypt. The bank has not confirmed any breach, and the outlet noted it had sought comment without response as of publication.
ZachXBT's account places the intrusion over a span of several days rather than a single incident, and he has said he believes the real total could climb once over-the-counter trades tied to the attacker are factored in. His initial Monday disclosure pointed to an unnamed EU entity losing upward of $106 million from several exchange accounts on November 1, with funds pulled out in USDC and USDT before being converted to ETH, routed through instant swap services, partially turned into Monero, and spread across multiple blockchains to obscure the trail.
By Tuesday, the figure had grown. ZachXBT said he had traced an additional $27 million in exchange withdrawals linked to the same actor, some occurring after his first post went public, pushing the combined total past $133 million, per Decrypt. He also released four Ethereum addresses he attributes to the theft.
Central to his accusation is a claim that the institution's failure to file a proper incident report has blocked authorities from freezing roughly $30 million of the stolen assets, allowing that portion to be laundered. He has not disclosed how he connected the exploit to Crédit Mutuel Arkéa specifically, nor how the attacker first obtained access to the exchange accounts involved.
The report surfaces as the bank has been working toward entering the crypto sector, having applied in May for a MiCA license that would let it offer crypto services to retail clients and through its Arkéa Banking Services arm, per earlier French financial press coverage cited in the Decrypt report. ZachXBT has also distanced the case from the recent $6.3 billion Binance hack attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group by the FBI, stating he is highly confident the same actor is not responsible here based on differing laundering patterns.
Unresolved questions include whether Crédit Mutuel Arkéa will issue any formal statement, how the attacker breached exchange-held accounts in the first place, and whether the $30 million ZachXBT says went unfrozen can still be recovered or traced further.