Two brothers who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were arrested Wednesday on U.S. charges for carrying out a cutting-edge scheme to exploit the integrity of the Ethereum blockchain and steal $25 million worth of cryptocurrencies.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan called the plot by Anton Perer-Bueno, 24, and James Perer-Bueno, 28, “novel” and said the case was groundbreaking. Ta. This is the first time such fraud has been the subject of criminal charges in the United States..
Authorities say they carried out an elaborate heist in April 2023, stealing $25 million from traders in just 12 seconds by illegally accessing pending trades and altering cryptocurrency movements. It was announced that.
“As we allege, the defendants’ plan calls into question the very integrity of blockchain,” said U.S. Attorney Damien Williams.
The indictment charged them Conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. Anton Peraire-Bueno was arrested in Boston and James Peraire-Bueno was arrested in New York.
Their lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Both brothers attended Cambridge, Mass.-based MIT, where they studied computer science and mathematics, developing the skills and education they relied on to carry out the fraud, prosecutors said.
According to the indictment, the Perer Bueno brothers plotted over a period of several months to manipulate and tamper with the protocols used to verify transactions contained in the Ethereum blockchain, a public ledger that records each cryptocurrency transaction. is said to have been established.
Prosecutors exploited a vulnerability in the code of a software called MEV Boost used by most “verifiers” on the Ethereum network, which are responsible for checking that new transactions are valid before being added to the blockchain. He said he committed the crime.
Prosecutors said the brothers refused requests to return the funds after carrying out the heist, and instead took steps to launder and conceal the stolen cryptocurrencies.
