{"id":45511,"date":"2021-07-05T12:23:24","date_gmt":"2021-07-05T09:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=45511"},"modified":"2025-09-01T11:32:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T08:32:33","slug":"former-cryptopia-employee-pleads-guilty-to-stealing-more-than-170000-in-cryptocurrency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/former-cryptopia-employee-pleads-guilty-to-stealing-more-than-170000-in-cryptocurrency\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Cryptopia employee pleads guilty to stealing more than $170,000 in cryptocurrency"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former employee of the New Zealand\u2013based bitcoin exchange Cryptopia, which is in liquidation, has admitted to stealing more than $170,000 in cryptocurrency. This is reported by Stuff<\/a> citing the transcript of the court proceedings.<\/p>\n

The case was heard by Christchurch district court judge Allister Davis. The employee, whose name has not been disclosed, pleaded guilty to two counts.<\/p>\n

He said that during his tenure at Cryptopia he created copies of private keys from users\u2019 wallets and stored them on a USB drive. Using his personal computer, he moved the cryptocurrency worth NZ$245,000 (~$172,000).<\/p>\n

The theft was not connected with the January 2019 hack. At that time, the exchange lost up to 10% of its funds \u2014 more than $17 million. Customer assets worth around $100 million were frozen.<\/p>\n

In an effort to compensate customers, Cryptopia initiated liquidation. The liquidator was Grant Thornton, which in December 2020 began accepting claims for the return of funds<\/a> from account holders.<\/p>\n

Prior to that, Grant Thornton received a letter from one of its clients. He said that he had accidentally sent several bitcoins to an old deposit wallet at Cryptopia, and asked for the funds to be returned.<\/p>\n

Experts checked a number of transactions and found that 13 BTC were withdrawn from such wallets, with 2 BTC of that amount routed through bitcoin mixers. The total value of the cryptocurrency at the time of the operations was around NZ$235,000 (~$165,000).<\/p>\n

Later it emerged that other digital assets were withdrawn in the same manner worth NZ$10,000 (~$7,000).<\/p>\n

Learning that Grant Thornton was examining the exchange\u2019s old deposit wallets, the former Cryptopia employee contacted the audit firm and returned the stolen cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n

He was released on bail pending a final ruling on 20 October.<\/p>\n

In February 2021, hackers withdrew XSN tokens worth $45,000 from Cryptopia\u2019s cold wallet, which had not been used since the breach.<\/p>\n

Read ForkLog bitcoin news in our Telegram<\/a> \u2014 cryptocurrency news, prices and analytics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A former employee of Cryptopia, which is in liquidation, admitted stealing more than $170,000 in cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1154,1736,1381],"class_list":["post-45511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-crimes","tag-cryptopia","tag-new-zealand"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"39","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45512,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45511\/revisions\/45512"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}