Singapore court authorizes freeze order attached to wallets as soulbound NFT

A British investigative firm tracked down stolen funds and convinced the High Court of Singapore to mark the wallets containing the funds permanently with its order.

The Singapore High Court has allowed financial investigation firm Intelligent Sanctuary (iSanctuary) to attach nonfungible tokens (NFTs) containing a legal document to cold wallets associated with a hack, according to United Kingdom-based iSanctuary and local press accounts.

A court-issued worldwide freeze order was tokenized as soulbound NFTs and attached to the wallets in question. The NFTs will not prevent transactions with the wallets but will serve as a warning to counterparties and exchanges that the wallets were involved in a hack. In addition, iSanctuary claimed it has devised a means of tracking funds leaving the wallets, thanks to the NFTs. The NFTs will be permanently attached to the wallets.

iSanctuary recounted on its website that it was employed by a businessperson who had lost $3 million in crypto assets and was able to track the stolen funds. Furthermore:

“The on chain and off chain evidence was presented by an iSanctuary senior investigator to the Singapore High Court and the worldwide injunction, a first issued by that court, was granted. iSanctuary financial and crypto investigators identified a series of cold wallets holding the proceeds of the crime and their method of service via NFT was accepted by the court.”

No additional details were provided. iSanctuary named Mintology, an app created by Singaporean NFT studio Mintable, as the producer of the NFTs. That was indirectly confirmed by Mintable founder Zach Burks in a posting on X (formerly Twitter).

Thanks @straits_times for the great article.

Happy to help clean up the crypto space and move the NFT ecosystem into a realm of utility and away from the speculation of jpegs!

The future is of NFTs is coming! https://t.co/PKmd7uxD7k shows how.https://t.co/S8Jf2seNhy

— Zach Burks (@ZachSpaded) October 18, 2023

The Straits Times reported on Oct. 17 that the case was related to a stolen private key and that Singapore-based crypto exchanges were involved in laundering the funds from the hack by fraudsters “purported to be from Singapore.” It added that the case “spans countries from Singapore to Spain, Ireland, Britain and other European countries.”

The newspaper quoted iSanctuary founder Jonathan Benton as saying, “This is a game changer; it can happen in hours if needed. We can serve on wallets and start to police the blockchain, identify those holding illicit assets, serve civil or criminal orders, even red flags.”

NFTs have been used to deliver court summonses in Italy and the United States.

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