Home
News
A former employee of the now-closed down cryptocurrency trading firm Cryptopia has admitted to the court that he stole $250,000 worth of crypto including their customers’ data. The man – whose names withheld, showed up at the Christchurch District Court on Monday as he pleaded guilty before Judge Gerard Lynch.
New Zealand-based publication Stuff noted that the ex-Cryptopia staff confessed to a couple of charges i.e. the theft for more than $1,000 and theft by a person in a special relationship He was then convicted and remanded on bail until he is sentenced on October 20.
Further, it was learned that the former staff – while still employed in Cryptopia – managed to create copies of the crypto trading company’s private keys and wallets and saved them on a USB stick. The heap of information that he stole was then uploaded on his personal computer as these allowed him to gain access to thousands of digital wallets, not to mention $100 million worth of various cryptocurrencies.
With that in mind, Cryptopia won’t have the capacity of retrieving the funds if these are stolen from them. The only way to get it back is to either provide the private keys to another wallet from where the funds have been placed or have the person who stole it return it to them.
Missing Bitcoins
It was on the third of September of last year where David Ruscoe – a financial advisory services partner over at Grant Thornton – got an e-mail from a former Cryptopia client raising concerns of him accidentally depositing some Bitcoin (BTC) into an old wallet of the defunct crypto trading firm adding his digital currency be returned to him. Upon reviewing the wallets, however, Grant Thornton observed that 13 Bitcoin were illegally withdrawn from different Cryptopia wallets and was done in a series of transactions.
It was also found out that a couple of these Bitcoins were eventually put through a so-called mixing service which is devised to launder cryptocurrencies, and at the same time hide both the identity of the person doing it and where the virtual money headed. During that time, Bitcoin was worth $235,000.
Come September 10, the now-convicted employee sent out an e-mail to both Tom Aspin and Ruscoe of Grant Thornton and confessed that he’s the one who stole those Bitcoins. Also, the employee admitted that he stole an unspecified cryptocurrency as it is valued at $10,000.
The employee said that he was able to return part of the cryptocurrencies that he stole adding that he’ll just pay the remainder of it. The next day came and he sent out another email as he revealed that he already brought back six of the stolen Bitcoins alongside the assurance that he won’t get into legal troubles which did not happen since he’s not waiting for his jail sentence.
Per the “summary of facts” that were gathered, the former Cryptopia employee was frustrated with the firm, though pretty much optimistic for believing that he could pull off a clean getaway on this one.
Steve Anderson is an Australian crypto enthusiast. He is a specialist in management and trading for over 5 years. Steve has worked as a crypto trader, he loves learning about decentralisation, understanding the true potential of the blockchain.
