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Two brothers charged in 12-second $25 million cryptocurrency theft
- Two brothers have been arrested and accused of carrying out a $25 million cryptocurrency theft in just seconds.
- The Justice Department said the Peraire-Bueno brothers tampered with the Ethereum blockchain and funneled money into private accounts.
- The theft was carried out using a “first-of-its-kind” method, investigators said.
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Two brothers have been arrested and charged in a major cryptocurrency theft, the Justice Department said Wednesday. The pair stole about $25 million in cryptocurrency in a robbery that lasted about 12 seconds.
Anton Peraire-Bueno, a 24-year-old Boston resident, and James Peraire-Bueno, a 28-year-old New York resident, now face numerous charges, including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, the department said. in a statement on Wednesday.
The brothers, who had studied mathematics at university and had extensive knowledge of cryptocurrency, allegedly stole crypto funds from other users by tampering with transactions on the Ethereum blockchain, using a process believed to be “the first of its kind”, prosecutors said .
The stolen funds were funneled into a mix of shell companies, private crypto addresses and foreign cryptocurrency exchanges, which New York IRS officials were able to trace.
“As we allege, Defendants’ scheme calls into question the very integrity of blockchain,” Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement. “And once their plan was in motion, the robbery took just 12 seconds to complete. This alleged plan was new and had never been charged before. But as the indictment makes clear, no matter how sophisticated the fraud or how new are the techniques used To achieve this goal, career prosecutors in this office will be relentless in prosecuting individuals who attack the integrity of all financial systems.”
The Peraire-Bueno brothers were arrested on Tuesday and will appear in two separate courts on Wednesday afternoon. They face up to 20 years in prison on each count they were convicted of, the Justice Department said.