SafeMoon, a decentralized finance project exploited in March, resulting in a net loss of $8.9 million in BNB, has been charged by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and its key executives for security rules violations and frauds.
The funds associated with the exploit have been on the move via centralized exchanges and Match System, a blockchain analytic firm, believes these transfers via CEX could become critical for law enforcement agencies.
Sean Thornton from Match System told Cointelegraph that they suspect centralized exchanges were used as an intermediate link in the money laundering chain.
“On CEX, funds could be exchanged for other tokens and withdrawn further, and accounts on CEX could be registered for drops (dummy persons). Taking into account the fact that it is almost impossible to trace the movement of funds through CEX without a request from law enforcement agencies, CEX is a more preferable option than DEX for a hacker to gain time and confuse paths,” Thornton explained.
Match System carried out a post-mortem of the SafeMoon smart contract and the subsequent movement of funds to analyze the behavior of the exploiters. The analysis revealed that the hacker exploited a vulnerability in SafeMoon’s contract associated with the “Bridge Burn” feature, allowing anyone to call the “burn” function on SFM tokens at any address. These attackers used the vulnerability to transfer other users’ tokens to the developer’s address.
The transfer made by exploiters resulted in 32 billion SFM tokens being sent from SafeMoon’s LP address to SafeMoon’s deployer address. This led to an instant pump in the value of tokens. The exploiter used the price pump to swap some of the SFM tokens for BNBs at an inflated price. As a result, 27380 BNB were transferred to the hacker’s address.
Match System, in its analysis, found that the smart contract vulnerability was not present in the previous version and only came in with the new update on March 28, the day of the exploit, leading many to believe the involvement of an insider. These speculations gained more fuel by Nov.1 as the SECf iled charges against SafeMoon project and its three executives, accusing them of committing fraud and violating securities laws.
Thornton told Cointelegraph that the SEC accusations are not unfounded and they also found evidence that may indicate the involvement of SafeMoon management in the hacking that occurred. He added that whether this was done intentionally or was the criminal negligence of the employees will have to be sorted out by law enforcement agencies.
The SEC alleged that the CEO of SafeMoon, John Karony, and the chief technical officer, Thomas Smith, embezzled investor cash and withdrew $200 million in assets from the enterprise. The SafeMoon executives are also facing charges from the Justice Department for conspiring to commit wire fraud, money laundering, and securities fraud.
The hacker behind the attack initially claimed they had mistakingly exploited the protocol and wanted to set up a communication channel to return 80% of the funds. Since then, the funds linked to the exploits have moved on several occasions, many times via centralized exchanges like Binance, which the analytic firm believes will be critical for law enforcement agencies to track down the perpetrators of the exploit.
It is “shameful” that black boys growing up in London are “far more likely” to die than white boys, Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley has told Sky News.
Sir Mark, who came out of retirement to become head of the UK’s largest police force in 2022, said: “We can’t pretend otherwise that we’ve got a history between policing and black communities where policing has got a lot wrong.
“And we get a lot more right today, but we do still make mistakes. That’s not in doubt. I’m being as relentless in that as it can be.”
He said the “vast majority” of the force are “good people”.
However, he added: “But that legacy, combined with the tragedy that some of this crime falls most heavily in black communities, that creates a real problem because the legacy creates concern.”
Sir Mark, who also leads the UK’s counter-terrorism policing, said it is “not right” that black boys growing up in London “are far more likely to be dead by the time they’re 18” than white boys.
“That’s, I think, shameful for the city,” he admitted.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
0:39
Police chase suspected phone thief
Baroness Casey was commissioned in 2021 to look into the Met Police after serving police officer Wayne Couzens abducted, raped and murdered Sarah Everard.
She pinned the primary blame for the Met’s culture on its past leadership and found that stop and search and the use of force against black people was excessive.
At the time, Sir Mark, who had been commissioner for six months when the report was published, said he would not use the labels of institutionally racist, institutionally misogynistic and institutionally homophobic, which Casey insisted the Met deserved.
However, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who helped hire Sir Mark – and could fire him – made it clear the commissioner agreed with Baroness Casey’s verdict.
After the report was released, Sir Mark said “institutional” was political language so he was not going to use it, but he accepted “we have racists, misogynists…systematic failings, management failings, cultural failings”.
A few months after the report, Sir Mark launched a two-year £366m plan to overhaul the Met, including increased emphasis on neighbourhood policing to rebuild public trust and plans to recruit 500 more community support officers and an extra 565 people to work with teams investigating domestic violence, sexual offences and child sexual abuse and exploitation.
Watch the full interview on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips from 8.30am on Sunday.
Labour’s largest union donor, Unite, has voted to suspend Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner over her role in the Birmingham bin strike row.
Members of the trade union, one of the UK’s largest, also “overwhelmingly” voted to “re-examine its relationship” with Labour over the issue.
They said Ms Rayner, who is also housing, communities and local government secretary, Birmingham Council’s leader, John Cotton, and other Labour councillors had been suspended for “bringing the union into disrepute”.
There was confusion over Ms Rayner’s membership of Unite, with her office having said she was no longer a member and resigned months ago and therefore could not be suspended.
But Unite said she was registered as a member. Parliament’s latest register of interests had her down as a member in May.
The union said an emergency motion was put to members at its policy conference in Brighton on Friday.
More on Angela Rayner
Related Topics:
Unite is one of the Labour Party’s largest union donors, donating £414,610 in the first quarter of 2025 – the highest amount in that period by a union, company or individual.
The union condemned Birmingham’s Labour council and the government for “attacking the bin workers”.
Mountains of rubbish have been piling up in the city since January after workers first went on strike over changes to their pay, with all-out strike action starting in March. An agreement has still not been made.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
2:58
Rat catcher tackling Birmingham’s bins problem
Ms Rayner and the councillors had their membership suspended for “effectively firing and rehiring the workers, who are striking over pay cuts of up to £8,000”, the union added.
‘Missing in action’
General secretary Sharon Graham told Sky News on Saturday morning: “Angela Rayner, who has the power to solve this dispute, has been missing in action, has not been involved, is refusing to come to the table.”
She had earlier said: “Unite is crystal clear, it will call out bad employers regardless of the colour of their rosette.
“Angela Rayner has had every opportunity to intervene and resolve this dispute but has instead backed a rogue council that has peddled lies and smeared its workers fighting huge pay cuts.
“The disgraceful actions of the government and a so-called Labour council, is essentially fire and rehire and makes a joke of the Employment Relations Act promises.
“People up and down the country are asking whose side is the Labour government on and coming up with the answer not workers.”
Image: Piles of rubbish built up around Birmingham because of the strike over pay
Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman said the government’s “priority is and always has been the residents of Birmingham”.
He said the decision by Unite workers to go on strike had “caused disruption” to the city.
“We’ve worked to clean up streets and remain in close contact with the council […] as we support its recovery,” he added.
A total of 800 Unite delegates voted on the motion.
Binance co-founder CZ has dismissed a Bloomberg report linking him to the Trump-backed USD1 stablecoin, threatening legal action over alleged defamation.