Two brothers have stolen more than 20 million euros in the USA. Now they are facing prison for it. The two manipulated a blockchain.
According to colleagues from ArsTechnica, the brothers are two MIT students who were able to “utilize specialized skills and training to manipulate protocols”.
In this way, they managed to access more than 20 million euros in less than half a minute. They are now in court in the USA.
The two brothers face decades of prison sentences
What did the two do? According to the court, the two brothers were able to manipulate the Ethereum blockchain to access pending private transactions. In this way, they could alter them and obtain the cryptocurrencies of their victims, netting them 24 million euros.
The victims were powerless to stop it, as they demanded the return of the funds when they noticed the error, which the brothers, who already had the rights to the transaction, refused and kept the money.
What happens next? In court, the two now face the maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison each. In total, that amounts to 40 years. The two perpetrators have already been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering simultaneously. This has been reported among others by our Spanish colleagues from 3DJuegos.
How much money one can make with cryptocurrencies and what risks exist is also demonstrated by another example: A German engineer misplaced his password to his wallet, which is worth over 200 million euros. He also refuses help: A German has 2 attempts left to access 222 million euros – An expert wants to help him, but he refuses the help
