US authorities accuse the Perair Bueno brothers of carrying out their elaborate heist in April 2023, stealing $25 million from Ethereum traders in just 12 seconds.
Two brothers who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were arrested on charges of implementing an advanced scheme to take advantage of the integrity of the block chain For cryptocurrency “Ethereum” and the theft of $25 million in cryptocurrency, as reported Bloomberg Agency.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan described the scheme carried out by Anton Berair-Bueno, 24, and James Berair-Bueno, 28, as “new” and said that this case represents the first time US criminal charges have been brought for this type of fraud.
Authorities accuse the two brothers of carrying out their elaborate heist in April 2023, stealing $25 million from traders in just 12 seconds by illegally gaining access to pending transactions and altering the movement of the digital currency.
“As we allege, the defendants’ scheme calls into question the integrity of the blockchain itself,” US Attorney Damien Williams said.
The two brothers were charged with an indictment that included a charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, a charge of wire fraud, and a charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Anton Berair Bueno was arrested in Boston, while James Berair Bueno was arrested in New York.
The two brothers graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they studied computational science and mathematics and developed the skills and education necessary to carry out their scam.
The indictment stated that the two Perair Bueno brothers planned, over a period of months, to tamper with and interfere with the protocols used to verify the authenticity of transactions for inclusion in the blockchain of the digital currency “Ethereum,” which is a public ledger that records every transaction in the digital currency.
The prosecution said that they did this by exploiting a vulnerability in the program code known as “MEV-boost,” which is used by most “validators” on the Ethereum network, who are responsible for verifying the validity of new transactions before adding them to the block chain.
The prosecution said that after carrying out the theft, the two brothers refused to respond to requests to return the money and instead chose to take steps to launder and hide the stolen digital currency.
