Top Crypto Auditor CertiK Runs Into New Crisis as it Fails to Identify Money Launderers

Crypto security specialist and smart contract auditor CertiK has just found itself in hot water again, as it apparently took money from a major money laundering entity and still confirmed their audit.

Taylor Monahan, a crypto security expert at the most popular Ethereum (ETH) wallet MetaMask, was the first to share: "A literal multi-billion dollar money laundering operation paid CertiK to stamp their new money laundering contract with approval."

The company audited the Huione USD (USDH) stablecoin project, which is tied to Huione Guarantee, a multibillion-dollar Telegram-based marketplace serving fraudsters in Southeast Asia. USDH is their stablecoin, launched in September last year. Blockchain analysis company Elliptic claims that Huione Guarantee is part of Huione Group, a Cambodian conglomerate with links to the country’s ruling Hun family. Meanwhile, analysts also claim that Huione Group entities have received at least $89 billion in cryptoassets to date.

"They straight up traffic humans to work in massive compounds where they are forced to fucking scam people. Insane depths of depravity. [CertiK,] this is who you work for," Monahan said, claiming that the company already knew their customer was a criminal.

Meanwhile, Ronghui Gu, co-founder of CertiK, thanked Monahan "for flagging this."

"Our team was contacted by a third-party dev agency, so we failed to link it to the fraudsters until much later. We flagged the risk on Skynet with a low score (30/100) plus a warning," Gu said, admitting that "deeper due diligence and extra alerts would’ve helped."

He also claimed that the company donated the received fees to the SENS Research Foundation.

An X user, Loop, reacted to the statement by the co-founder of the security company by asking rhetorically whether "deep due diligence" isn't the basis of their business, to which Gu hasn't replied.

This is not the first time CertiK has run into a crisis. A year ago, the company confirmed that one of their employees fell victim to a phishing attack and their account was compromised. "No significant loss" was reported at the time.

Back then, independent blockchain sleuth ZachXBT wondered whether the company would reimburse victims, as it didn't "find the 'well-known media' account which contacted you suspicious since they had not posted since April 2020 (clearly compromised)."

Meanwhile, the website of Huione USD lists multiple projects among its "partners," including three platforms related to controversial crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun—the Tron blockchain, decentralized exchange SunSwap, and centralized exchange Huobi (now HTX).