• LesserAbe@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Can you really “steal” money? It’s just paper with numbers written on it, just because the person who possesses the paper has changed doesn’t mean the paper has.

    • Euphorazine@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Yeah, but if you steal my money, the centralized state can punish you and demand restitution. It’s like when Seth Greene had his NFT phished, he had no legal recourse to get it back.

      Has there been any case where people stealing crypto got them in trouble? The only thing I’ve seen is where people create rug pulls and they get charged with fraud, so legal repercussions against an organization.

      • Ajen@sh.itjust.works
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        7 months ago

        Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years for stealing crypto. I’m sure other people have been charged too, but someone who gets caught stealing $100 of crypto probably won’t make the news.

        • Euphorazine@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Interesting. I used that video to look up the FBIs report, so the two listed got charged with money laundering. It says they “seized” the remaining Bitcoin, but it didn’t specifically mention it got returned to bitfinex? Considering it was stolen in 2016 and recovered in 2022.

          I also wonder how that affects sentencing and/or restitution. Considering they stole $70m of securities but it was recovered at $3.6b.

          Also, I wonder how the charges would have changed if they didn’t attempt to obfuscate it. Like would they just get wire fraud and using a computer to commit a crime? Maybe their charges were more than what was covered in the article. I didn’t see a charge listed for actual theft. Maybe they couldn’t easily prove they did the hack but could prove they laundered the crypto so that’s all they prosecuted on.

          • David Gerard@awful.systemsM
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            7 months ago

            there’s a jurisdictional issue on the hack, it’s not even clear it was a crime committed in the US.

            the money laundering was straightforward though.