A Maryland man could face up to 30 years in prison after prosecutors say he conducted two hacks of decentralized crypto exchange Uranium Finance.
In an indictment filed on Monday in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, prosecutors allege that Jonathan Spalletta, 36, was behind hacks of Uranium Finance beginning in 2021. He faces one count of computer fraud, carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years, and one count of money laundering, which carries up to 20 years in prison.
“As alleged, Jonathan Spalletta repeatedly hacked smart contracts to steal millions of dollars worth of other people’s money for himself, and destroyed a cryptocurrency exchange in the process,” said U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton in a statement.
“In describing his alleged ‘heist,’ Spalletta told another individual, ‘Crypto is just fake internet money anyway,'” Clayton added. “Stealing from a crypto exchange is stealing — the claim that ‘crypto is different’ does not change that.”
Prosecutors say that Spalletta first hacked the exchange in April 2021, where he allegedly “engaged in a deceptive series of transactions” with the exchange’s smart contracts to make it seem like he could withdraw more rewards than he should have received.
He continued those transactions until the liquidity pool was drained, pulling out about $1.4 million in that one hack, they said.
A few weeks later, Spalletta then took advantage of another error in the Uranium smart contract and was able to get $53.3 million, causing the exchange to shut down because there was a lack of funds, prosecutors said.
Spalletta laundered the funds and used them to buy millions of dollars in rare Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering trading cards and a “piece of fabric from the original Wright brothers’ airplane that was subsequently transported to the surface of the moon by astronaut Neil Armstrong on the first moon landing,” among other items.
In February 2025, authorities in the U.S. said they seized $31 million worth of crypto in the April 2021 hack.
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