Cryptopia’s Former Employee Admits He Stole $170k In Crypto

Former Employee at Cryptopia Exchange, present in New Zealand, has admitted to stealing more than $170,000 worth of different digital crypto assets from the company, now facing two charges.

Details about the Stealing

The former employee of the exchange admitted that he took part in stealing around 250,000 $NZ from the exchange, worth about $170,000 in value. The hearing was held by Judge Gerald Lynch at the Christchurch District Count on Monday. It was revealed that the Employee used a very smart strategy of stealing the digital assets, which involved illegally making copies of private keys from several wallets in the exchange and then transferring them to a portable USB Drive. The employee then emptied the contents of the USB into his own personal computer system. Having access to these sensitive private keys of wallets means that he could easily gain access to thousands of wallets, which would contain more than $100 Million worth of different cryptocurrencies stored inside them.

Mysterious Confession

The illegal activity was first noticed by the accounting firm back in September of last year when a customer wanted his Bitcoin deposit to be refunded because he had mistakenly stored it in a wallet from Cryptopia. After closer inspection, it was found out that around 13 of those Bitcoin, worth $165,000, had been withdrawn mysteriously. But then somehow, just after a week, the Ex-employee confessed his stealing to the accounting firm Grant Thornton, also notifying them of another set of stolen assets worth $7,000. The employee then proceeded to return some of those stolen assets back and also wanted to pay back the rest, but until that time, he had already been picked up by the authorities and was put on bail until the 20th of October.

Cryptopia Hacked!

Back at the start of 2019, the Cryptopia network got severely attacked by hackers. Cryptopia did confess about the hack but did not offer to reveal details about the hack, like the amount that was stolen and other details. Later on, around 19,391, Ethereum was mysteriously transferred from Cyrptopia into an unknown Wallet, which seemed to highlight details about the stolen funds. Later on, in the same year, Cryptopia had to deal with another hack, which resulted in the hackers managing to steal around $24Million worth of cryptocurrencies, making up around 15% of the total crypto holdings of the companies. This hacking event was known as one of the largest thefts in the history of New Zealand. 

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