- Two brothers were arrested and charged with pulling off a $25 million crypto heist in seconds.
- The DOJ said the Peraire-Bueno brothers tampered with the ethereum blockchain and funneled money to private accounts.
- The theft was executed using a" first of its kind" method, prosecutors said.
Two brothers were arrested and charged with a major crypto heist, the Department of Justice said on Wednesday. The pair stole around $25 million worth of crypto in a heist that took about 12 seconds.
Anton Peraire-Bueno, a 24-year-old based in Boston, and James Peraire-Bueno, a 28-year-old based in New York, now face numerous charges, including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, the Department said in a statement on Wednesday.
The brothers, who had studied mathematics in university and had extensive knowledge of cryptocurrency, allegedly stole crypto funds from other users by tampering with transactions on the ethereum blockchain, using a process believed to be "the very first of its kind," prosecutors said.
The stolen funds were funneled into a mix of shell companies, private crypto addresses, and foreign crypto exchanges, which New York IRS officials were able to trace.
"As we allege, the defendants' scheme calls the very integrity of the blockchain into question," Damian Williams, the Southern District of New York's US Attorney, said in a statement. "And once they put their plan into action, their heist only took 12 seconds to complete. This alleged scheme was novel and has never before been charged. But as the indictment makes clear, no matter how sophisticated the fraud or how new the techniques used to accomplish it, the career prosecutors of this office will be relentless in pursuing people who attack the integrity of all financial systems."
The Peraire-Bueno brothers were arrested on Tuesday and are set to appear in two separate courts Wednesday afternoon. They face up to 20 years in prison for each count they've convicted on, the Justice Department said.