A former employee of the discontinued Cryptopia exchange confessed to stealing $172,000 worth of cryptocurrency, according to the New Zealand edition of Stuff.
According to the prosecution, the employee, whose name was not disclosed, copied the private keys from several wallets to a USB drive while working at the exchange, which he then brought home to transfer to his personal computer. According to Stuff, these keys potentially gave him access to more than $100 million in various cryptocurrencies. After the termination of the contract with the exchange, he saved the copied information.
The charges against this employee are not related to the hacking of Cryptopia in 2019, which subsequently caused its closure. However, on September 3, 2020, David Rusko from the audit company Grant Thornton, appointed to manage the assets of the exchange after the removal of its administration, received a letter from one of the former clients of Cryptopia, who reported that he accidentally made a deposit to the old address, and asked to return the bitcoins.
In the process of studying the wallets, Grant Thornton found that 13 bitcoins were illegally withdrawn from several wallets during a series of transactions. Two bitcoins were subsequently transferred to the address of the mixer service. On September 10, Rusko received a letter from a former Cryptopia employee, who, after learning about the Grant Thornton find, confessed to stealing bitcoins himself. He said that he had returned some of the stolen goods, and promised to pay in full over time. The next day, he announced the transfer of six bitcoins and requested guarantees that he would not be prosecuted if he returned the entire amount. On the same day, he confirmed that he "returned everything".
Subsequently, giving evidence to the police, he admitted that he copied the keys, deleted them from the Cryptopia vault, stole the cryptocurrency and passed it through a mixer.
"The defendant admitted that he was annoyed by the Cryptopia story, but was also motivated by the belief that he could avoid responsibility, since he thought that no one would check old deposit wallets," the police said.