"Wow, he's also smart, but a mistake is still a mistake, right?"
Joint authorities with the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) charged two individuals with stealing $25 million in cryptocurrency through a scheme that exploited the integrity of the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain.
Explained further, the DOJ charged brothers Anton Peraire-Bueno and James Pepaire-Bueno after being found to have conspired to commit wire fraud, money laundering including obtaining tens of millions of US dollars in crypto in just 12 seconds.
According to Thomas Fattorusso, special agent in charge of the New York Field Office of the IRS Criminal Investigation revealed that the brothers who gained access to pending transactions altered the movement of electronic currency then stole $25 million in crypto from the victim.
It is well known that the exploitation is focused on the maximum extractable value (MEV)* in the ETH blockchain.
*Maximum value block producers (miners or validators) can earn by including, reordering or excluding transactions when generating new blocks
In this case, the siblings allegedly used a series of test transactions that allowed them to own the blockchain and then release the full content of the proposed block prematurely and steal crypto.
However, US authorities said the siblings, who refused requests to return the stolen funds, hid digital assets using shell firms** and foreign crypto exchanges, where those who could have faced up to 20 years in prison transferred them to multiple wallets.
**A firm without active business operations or significant assets
Through observations on blockchain security platform CertiK, victims of hacking, exploitation and fraud have lost $25 million in April 2023 which is the lowest monthly figure since 2021 while losing $1 billion in 2023.
