Former Cryptopia employee pleads guilty to stealing $ 170,000 in crypto

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A former employee of former New Zealand-based cryptocurrency exchange Cryptopia has pleaded guilty to charges of theft of $ 245,000 (US $ 171,969) in crypto.

A district court granted a temporary name suppression to the ex-employee who admitted two counts, including theft by a person in a special relationship and theft over $ 1,000, reported Monday. local media stuff.

While at the exchange, the anonymous employee created copies of Cryptopia’s private keys, saving them to a USB storage key before taking it home and downloading the data to his personal computer.

At its peak, the New Zealand-based exchange, currently in liquidation following a disastrous hack in 2019, employed more than 80 people while serving 1.4 million clients globally.

As a result of the hack, all accounts receivable, totaling over $ 100 million at today’s prices, were frozen after over $ 17 million in ether and other crypto was stolen. A liquidation procedure was then initiated in order to recover the former users concerned of the exchange.

The man, whose charges are unrelated to the 2019 hack, then told Cryptopias liquidator Grant Thornton in September that he had deposited bitcoins into an old Cryptopia wallet and demanded their return, Stuff reported. The man also admitted to returning some of the stolen funds, offering to pay the rest over time.

Grant Thornton, after reviewing a number of transactions, discovered that 13 bitcoins had been hijacked from a number of wallets. The liquidator also discovered that two of these bitcoins had been subjected to a crypto mixer in an attempt to conceal their provenance.

The total amount of bitcoin was worth approximately $ 235,000 (US $ 164,950) at the time of transactions. It was later revealed that an additional $ 10,000 (US $ 7,019) in various other crypto was also taken. Upon learning that Grant Thornton was reviewing the stock exchange’s old deposit portfolios, the man confessed.

The former employee then told the liquidators that he intended to return any stolen funds on condition that he obtained assurances that he would not be sued and did so the next day, telling his partner that he had “given everything back”.

The defendant admitted that he was frustrated with Cryptopia but also motivated by the belief that he could get away with the theft as he believed that no one would ever verify the old deposit wallets, a summary of the facts reads, as reported by Stuff.

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