Crypto exchange giant Binance and prediction markets platform Polymarket want the Polygon (POL) network to move about 70 million tokens out of the hands of the hackers who stole them late last month.

The two firms have filed a Polygon Improvement Proposal for a one-time hard fork that would set the POL balances in five attacker-controlled addresses to zero and credit the same amounts to recovery wallets the companies control, the proposal says.

The five addresses hold about 70.49 million POL, worth roughly $6.5 million at the October 29th price used in the proposal.

About 23.86 million POL sits in four addresses tied to the Polymarket hack on October 29th, while about 46.63 million POL sits in one address tied to the Binance hack that hit late the same day.

Polygon’s block producers have already added the addresses to a block list, so the funds cannot move.

But the companies say that is only a stopgap.

“The funds cannot move, but nothing in the current setup lets them be returned either.”

The proposal says the attacker has kept trying to get the funds out, including by offering validators cash to help unblock a transaction.

The fork would leave Polygon’s total supply unchanged.

It would only go live after approval through Polygon’s governance process, a test run on the Amoy testnet and proof that Binance and Polymarket control the recovery wallets.

The firms call it an extreme action that should not be reproduced commonly.

The plan is set to be presented at the Polygon Protocol Governance Call on November 5th at 14:30 UTC, with rollout expected to take about two weeks after approval.

Binance says it has already replaced most of the roughly $6.3 billion stolen from its hot wallets in the October 29th attack.

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The post Binance and Polymarket Propose Polygon Hard Fork To Recover About $6,500,000 in Hacked Crypto appeared first on The Daily Hodl.

Global central banks have added more gold to their reserves in the third quarter than in any quarter since late 2024, according to the World Gold Council, an industry body.

Central banks and other official institutions bought a net 321 tonnes of gold from July through September, up 42% from a year earlier, the World Gold Council says.

The council says portfolio diversification and risk management remain the main reasons behind the buying.

Central bank purchases so far this year stand at 675 tonnes, 6% higher than over the same stretch last year.

Gold-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) also returned to inflows, adding 211 tonnes and lifting total holdings to a record 4,256 tonnes.

Total gold demand slipped 1% from a year earlier to 1,369 tonnes, but its value jumped 22% to $188 billion as the gold price averaged $4,262 per ounce.

Demand for gold bars and coins fell 19% to 268 tonnes, while jewelry demand dropped 17% to 313 tonnes, the weakest third quarter in the council’s records.

Technology demand rose 3% to 85 tonnes, its highest quarterly total since late 2021, as AI-related manufacturing lifted electronics demand.

Says Louise Street, senior markets analyst at the World Gold Council,

“The third quarter was a mixed bag for gold demand. Gold ETF inflows came roaring back, with geopolitical risk and concerns around fiscal discipline driving institutional interest, in contrast to retail investors who held back amid uncertainty over the gold price outlook. Central Banks remained an important pillar of demand as pronounced buying continued from the official sector…

The outlook for gold looks finely balanced through to the end of the year. While rising interest rates and mixed inflation expectations present potential headwinds, the combined shadows of geopolitical risk and financial market stress may cause participants to seek stability in gold.”

Gold is trading at $4,130 an ounce at time of writing.

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The post Global Central Banks Splurge $42,423,360,000 on Gold in Just Three Months Amid Heightened ‘Geopolitical Risk and Concerns’ appeared first on The Daily Hodl.

A former Indiana letter carrier has been sentenced to six and a half years in federal prison for stealing checks from the mail in a $34 million bank fraud scheme that hit about 6,500 victims.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana says Destinee Ruffin, 29, of Indianapolis also got two years of supervised release after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and theft of mail.

Ruffin worked at the Bacon Station Post Office in Indianapolis, where she took checks from incoming and outgoing mail between April of 2020 and May of 2022 and sold them to co-conspirators.

The buyers changed the payee names and ran the checks through the bank accounts of people who handed over debit cards, PINs or online banking logins.

Ruffin supplied John Young, 24, with more than $12 million in stolen checks and sold Tony McMullen, 36, more than $235,000 worth.

The case began in the spring of 2020 when a Bacon Station customer complained that an Economic Impact Payment check never arrived, and more complaints led agents to Ruffin’s route.

Investigators later mailed controlled Treasury checks with recorded serial numbers and traced them back to her.

A search of her home, vehicle and devices in April of 2024 turned up thousands of unsold stolen checks worth more than $20 million, with stolen mail piled in closets, in corners and even in the bathroom.

One victim found out her $1,618 payment to keep her retired husband’s health insurance never arrived when she showed up for surgery and was told her coverage had been terminated, forcing the procedure to be canceled.

Says U.S. Attorney Tom Wheeler,

“Destinee Ruffin’s crimes were not isolated acts of theft; they represented a sweeping scheme that touched thousands of households and eroded a fundamental public trust. By stealing millions of dollars’ worth of checks from the mail, Ruffin and her co-conspirators disrupted critical benefits, jeopardized family finances, and caused real harm to individuals who depended on timely delivery for essential needs.”

Ruffin was also ordered to pay $121,270.30 in restitution.

Three of her co-conspirators have already been sentenced, and Young is set to be sentenced on December 3rd.

The Daily Hodl reported on Ruffin’s guilty plea in October.

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The post USPS Insider Who Stole Checks in $34,000,000 Fraud Scheme Hitting About 6,500 Victims Gets Six and a Half Years in Prison appeared first on The Daily Hodl.

A Wisconsin school district has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to a bank impersonation scam.

Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) initially lost $450,000 but has recovered $255,000 and is working to get back the remaining $195,000, reports FOX6 Milwaukee.

The district says it learned it was the victim of bank impersonation fraud and notified authorities on Monday.

MPS has not released details on how or when the fraud happened.

Says MPS Superintendent Brenda Cassellius,

“This is a sobering reminder of the sophisticated financial scams that occur every day across the country. We are taking swift and immediate action to strengthen our internal procedures to prevent this from happening…

We also are working with our partners at US Bank to recover the remainder of the funds.”

The district says it is putting short-term and long-term controls in place to protect its finances, but it has not said what those controls include.

Along with the criminal investigation, MPS is running its own internal probe.

Deputy chief financial officer Jennifer Buros will serve as acting chief financial officer, with help from Charles Burbridge of the Council of the Great City Schools.

The $450,000 loss is less than one-tenth of one percent of the $1.6 billion budget the Milwaukee Board of School Directors approved in May for the 2026-27 school year.

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Manufacturing giant 3M has agreed to pay billions of dollars to resolve most of the personal injury claims tied to “forever chemicals” in firefighting foam.

The company says it will make a $7.35 billion commitment over nine years, with a present value of $5.8 billion, to settle claims in the Aqueous Film-Forming Foam (AFFF) multidistrict litigation in South Carolina federal court.

Forever chemicals, known as PFAS, linger in the environment instead of breaking down and have been linked to health problems including cancer, reports The Hill.

3M says the deal addresses about 99% of current personal injury claims inside and outside the multidistrict litigation and involves about 115,000 to 120,000 eligible plaintiffs.

The company will pay $50 million in 2026 and nothing in 2027, with about 20% of the payments due in the final two years.

The total also includes a $680 million reserve fund for remaining and future claims.

Says 3M chairman and CEO William Brown,

“This settlement is a significant milestone for 3M and substantially reduces litigation uncertainty. Following our 2023 resolution with U.S. public water suppliers and our more recent settlement with the State of New Jersey, this is another important step in managing legacy PFAS matters.”

3M denies liability for the PFAS claims and says the agreement is not an admission of liability.

Attorneys Fred Thompson and David Hoyle of the law firm Motley Rice say in a statement,

“For the thousands of victims who have sought answers and accountability for nearly a decade, 3M’s $7.35 billion settlement is welcome news.”

3M separately settled claims from public water systems for more than $10 billion in 2023.

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Federal prosecutors have secured a guilty plea from a Washington resident accused of running a years-long romance scam that drained over $333,000 from a Portland victim.

Rithy Ham, 45, of Vancouver, Washington, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering, says the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon.

The scheme ran from September 2020 through May 2024 and relied on invented identities of two women who supposedly needed cash for daily bills, nursing school costs and escape from sex trafficking.

“Believing the women were real and in danger, the victim sent money on multiple occasions.”

The victim sent repeated payments after receiving messages from both Ham and the fabricated profiles.

One transfer of $36,872.35 occurred in November 2022, and another $20,922 came from a retirement account in March 2023.

Ham and his wife controlled the accounts that received the funds, and part of the proceeds paid for an $18,500 check to his wife.

“In total, Ham stole $333,249.52 from the victim, much of it from the victim’s retirement savings.”

Under the plea deal, Ham must repay the full amount and faces up to 20 years in prison on the wire fraud charge and up to 10 years on the money laundering count.

The FBI conducted the investigation.

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The company behind Cash App is set to pay $764 million to end a federal investigation into its anti-money laundering program.

Jack Dorsey’s Block disclosed the deal in its latest quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Block says it reached an agreement in principle with the Department of Justice (DOJ) in October to settle the matter through a deferred prosecution agreement.

Under the deal, the DOJ will put off for three years a charge that Block failed to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program in violation of the Bank Secrecy Act.

If Block meets the terms during that time, the DOJ will move to dismiss the charge.

The agreement is expected to carry a gross penalty of about $964 million, which drops to about $764 million after credit for earlier regulatory settlements.

The deal still needs a final agreement and court approval. Block had already set aside the full $764 million as of September 30th.

The payment is larger than the $565 million in net income Block reported for the third quarter.

The DOJ and SEC began looking into Block shortly after short seller Hindenburg Research published a report in March of 2023.

Hindenburg alleged that Cash App inflated its user numbers by counting duplicate and fake accounts and that weak identity checks let criminals use the app, reports Yahoo Finance. Block disputed the findings.

The SEC closed its own investigation in March of this year without recommending enforcement action.

Block posted $3.2 billion in gross profit for the quarter. Cash App gross profit rose 27% to $2.07 billion, while Square gross profit rose 14% to $1.16 billion.

Gross profit from Block’s Bitcoin business fell 50% to $52 million after the company cut fees on some Bitcoin transactions on Cash App, Yahoo Finance reports.

Block paid $40 million to New York’s financial regulator in April of 2025 over alleged anti-money laundering lapses at Cash App.

Block runs the Cash App payment app and the Square platform for merchants.

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A New York healthcare technology company has disclosed a data breach that exposed the medical information of nearly 50,000 people.

In its latest bulletin, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights says Cognitive Health Technologies suffered a hacking/IT incident impacting 49,467 individuals.

In a notice, Cognitive Health, which offers healthcare technology and IT consulting services, says it spotted suspicious activity on its network in late April of this year.

The firm also says the files taken include names, dates of birth, health insurance information, medical histories and treatment information.

“On April 27, 2026, Cognitive Health became aware of suspicious activity related to its network environment. We immediately took steps to secure our environment and launched an investigation to determine the nature and scope of the event. The investigation determined there was unauthorized access and/or acquisition of certain files and folders within Cognitive Health’s network between February 5, 2026, and April 28, 2026. As a result, Cognitive Health began an extensive review of these files and folders to determine whether sensitive information may be impacted. Our review determined that information related to certain individuals was present in the impacted data.”

The company says it has not found any misuse of the data so far.

It also says it has reviewed its security policies and added new measures to guard against similar attacks.

Cognitive Health urges impacted individuals to keep a close watch on incidents of identity theft and fraud, review account statements and monitor credit reports and explanation of benefits forms for suspicious activity.

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The post New York Healthcare Tech Firm Breached, Potentially Exposing Medical Data of 49,467 People – Names, Birthdates and Insurance Info at Risk appeared first on The Daily Hodl.