A former employee of the now defunct exchange Cryptopia pleaded guilty to stealing cryptoassets worth $ 171,969. This theft is not related to the hack of the exchange in 2019, which led to its closure.
According to Stuff, a former Cryptopia employee confessed to stealing crypto assets from the site. During his time on the exchange, an undisclosed employee created copies of Cryptopia’s private keys, saved them to a USB stick, and uploaded the data to his personal computer at home.
At its peak, the New Zealand exchange, which is now undergoing liquidation after being hacked in 2019, had more than 80 employees and served 1.4 million customers worldwide. As a result of the hack, $ 16 million worth of crypto assets were stolen.
Late last year, Cryptopia liquidation company Grant Thornton began accepting claims from affected users for damages.
An employee, whose activities were not related to the exchange hacking, told Grant Thornton last September that he had deposited BTC in an old Cryptopia wallet and asked for them to be returned. The company examined the transactions and found that 13 BTC had been withdrawn from multiple wallets.
The liquidator also revealed that 2 BTC were sent through a cryptocurrency mixer in an attempt to hide their origins. The total value of BTC at the time of the transaction was about $ 164,950. Later it turned out that another $ 7,019 were withdrawn in other cryptocurrencies. After Grant Thornton disclosed the information received, the former exchange employee confessed to the theft.
He then stated that he intends to return all the stolen money, provided that he will not be held accountable. He did it the next day and said that he had “returned everything.”
“The defendant admitted that he was disappointed in Cryptopia, but also believed that he could avoid punishment for theft, as he believed that no one would ever check old deposit wallets,” says the Stuff publication.
In February, it became known that hackers continue to steal crypto assets from users of the Cryptopia exchange, which is in the process of being liquidated. XSN coins worth $ 45,000 were stolen from an alleged cold wallet.
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