BitGrail Operator May Have Hacked Own Exchange to Steal €120M, Police Allege
Italian police said the Florence-based man is either behind the breaches or took no action after the first attack came to light.
Dec 21, 2020 at 4:04 p.m. UTCUpdated Aug 19, 2021 at 6:15 a.m. UTC
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A man who ran the now-bankrupt BitGrail exchange may have been behind a series of hacks that stole €120 million ($146.55 million) in cryptocurrency from his own platform, Italian police claimed Monday.
- The police said the perpetrator, a 34-year-old man from Florence named only as "F.F.", is either behind the breaches or took no action to prevent them after the first attack came to light.
- “It is not yet clear whether he participated actively in the theft or if he simply decided not to increase security measures after discovering it,” Ivano Gabrielli, director of the national centre for cyber crimes, said in Reuters' report.
- While in February 2018, F.F. contacted the Italian police to report the first hack, Italian authorities said it would have been simple to avoid later hacks, but instead, he "knowingly failed to prevent them.”
- The accused man faces charges of computer fraud, fraudulent bankruptcy and money-laundering.
- The amount lost in the attacks is the largest from a hack in Italy and one of the largest worldwide, according to police.
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