Hacker charged for stealing $53 million in crypto, faces up to 30 years in prison — Uranium Finance thief spent $2 million of illicit funds on Magic: The Gathering, $1 million on Pokémon cards

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The hacker used some of the proceeds to buy rare Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon cards and booster packs.

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The U.S. has just charged a hacker for allegedly attacking Uranium Finance, a decentralized exchange, allowing him to steal $53.3 million worth of cryptocurrency. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York is charging Jonathan Spalletta, also known as Cthulhon and Jspalletta, with computer fraud and money laundering, which could land him up to 30 years in prison.

“In describing his alleged ‘heist,’ Spalletta told another individual ‘Crypto is just fake internet money anyway.’ U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said. “Stealing from a crypto exchange is stealing — the claim that ‘crypto is different’ does not change that. For the victims, there is nothing different about having your money taken. Spalletta cost real victims real losses of tens of millions of dollars, and now he’s under real arrest.”

Spalletta conducted two different attacks on Uranium Finance. During the first attack, he executed a series of transactions on April 8, 2021, that allowed him to receive cryptocurrency “rewards” that were far higher than what he was supposed to receive. He extracted $1.4 million worth of crypto using this loophole but eventually returned the sum after forcing the platform to let him keep around $386,000 as a “bug bounty.” Unfortunately, this did not satisfy him, as Jonathan exploited an error in Uranium’s smart contract 20 days later. The issue affected 26 of Uranium’s liquidity pool, allowing him to steal approximately $53.3 million in cryptocurrency, resulting in the firm’s shutdown.

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He then proceeded to launder the stolen crypto, including running it through Tornado Cash to wipe the public blockchain trail. Once the funds were “cleaned,” he then proceeded to make big purchases, including a $500,000 “Black Lotus” Magic: The Gathering card, 18 Magic: The Gather “Alpha Booster” packs costing more than $1.5 million, a sealed first edition Pokémon “Booster” worth $257,500, and a first edition complete base set of Pokémon cards priced at $750,000.

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Jowi Morales
Jowi Morales
Contributing Writer

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

2 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Sluggotg
    Only 30 years? $53 million is an insane amount of money. Most likely he will be sentenced to less than 20 and get out after less that half that. Then go do it again.
    I wished I had hung on to my Magic the Gathering cards back in the day. I had a Black Lotus and most of the other expensive cards back then. I even had some miscut Alpha's. But everyone has had that kind of experience.
    Reply
  • PEnns
    Hmmmm, who knows, maybe this dude stashed the money overseas in untraceable accounts (yay, like crypto!) and when he's out in 10-12 years he's sitting pretty on a very respectable amount of money, possibly exponentially more than $53 million.

    Crime does pay when it comes to certain untraceable things....
    Reply