The investigator said the attacker swapped funds into Monero and moved BTC across chains using Thorchain.
Onchain investigator ZachXBT said a victim lost more than $282 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC) and Litecoin (LTC) in a scam involving a hardware wallet earlier this month.
In a post on X, ZachXBT said the theft happened on Jan. 10, 2026, around 11 p.m. UTC, and involved about 2.05 million LTC and 1,459 BTC. He said the victim was tricked in a social engineering scam.
The theft was reported as major crypto prices were slightly higher on the day. Litecoin (LTC) was trading around $74.57, up 3.6% in the past 24 hours, while Bitcoin (BTC) traded near $95,512, up 0.2%, according to CoinGecko.
The case highlights how even hardware wallets can be risky if someone is fooled into giving up access or approving a bad transaction. These scams don’t involve breaking code; instead, they rely on tricking the victim.
According to ZachXBT, the attacker began converting the stolen BTC and LTC into Monero (XMR) through multiple instant exchanges. Monero is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency and is currently trading at $642.77, down 3.7% on the day.
He said the conversions contributed to a sharp increase in XMR’s price as the market absorbed the flow. ZachXBT also said the attacker bridged BTC to other networks, including Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin, using Thorchain, a cross-chain liquidity protocol.
The theft comes as security firms continue to warn that many big crypto losses come from user error and scams. PeckShield reported that total exploit losses fell to about $76 million in December 2025 from $194.3 million in November, though it said incident activity remained elevated.
