The pamphlet ruined everything. South Korea’s National Tax Service (NTS) published a press release last Thursday aimed at highlighting its crackdown on tax dodgers – and somewhere in the process, a full seed bag phrase was photographed, printed, and sent to the public without anyone noticing.
By the time someone did that, 4.8 million worth of tokens had already gone out the door.
One Picture, One Mistake, Millions Gone
The press release included an image of the Ledger hardware wallet placed next to a handwritten sheet containing the wallet’s complete mnemonic phrase — a series of words that serve as the master key of any crypto wallet.
There is no fading. There is no masking. Nothing. According to reports from Korean media outlets including Naver and Chosun, the release was part of a wider NTS enforcement campaign targeting tax defaulters, with seized crypto assets shown as evidence of the agency’s work.
What was intended to show government action instead gave anyone with sharp eyes full access to the funds inside.
Blockchain researchers who examined the transaction history of the wallet found three separate transfers that did not contain a total of 4 million PRTG tokens (Pre-Retogeum), followed by one outgoing transfer that flushed the entire balance to another address. Clean up. Immediately. It’s gone.
Researcher Says Real Loss May Be Less Than Seen
Associate professor Jaewoo Cho of the Blockchain Research Center of Hansong University confirmed the theft publicly from X, writing that 4 million tokens – with an estimated value of $4.8 million – were taken directly from the mnemonic phrase disclosed in the NTS release.
한세청사진 보나나로로 유출(공개)한 니모덕사진 10 hours ago I checked PRTG token 400만 개, 약 480만러섘 달어 영스트. pic.twitter.com/JWnVI5Ua0N
— 조재우(Jaewoo Cho)⚡️ (@clayop) February 27, 2026
He also checked other wallets whose seed phrases may have been seen in the same image and said those did not appear to be at high risk.
Cho added that because PRTG tokens are difficult to monetize, the actual financial damage may be much smaller than the headline number suggests. He expressed his hope that this incident will pressure South Korean government agencies to finally develop proper systems to handle the seized crypto assets.
NTS has not issued a public response to the incident as of writing.
The Pattern of Child Custody Problems in South Korea
What makes this story hard to ignore is that it did not happen alone. Reports say that South Korean police separately discovered in February 2026 that 22 Bitcoins seized in a 2021 robbery were missing from a cold case kept at the Gangnam Police Station.
Two suspects were arrested after investigators discovered the coins had been transported using a mysterious phrase that authorities have never been able to control.
The coins, worth $1.4 million, are gone.
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
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