$620K Stolen In Crypto Leads To Arrest Of A Barber In Romania

Sometimes the world causes events that one only thinks to deserve to be in fiction. Such is the case with one Ionel Roman, a Romanian citizen from Craiova, the southern city of the nation. On the 5th of March, 2021, Roman was arrested by the country’s authorities, facing charges of Money Laundering, IT Fraud, and Hacking.

Things Still Kind Of Hazy On Details

Now, the details are pretty sparse on this front. For reasons unknown, the Directorate For Investigation Of Organized Crime and Terrorism opted to not name the crypto exchange operator in particular. Instead, the organization claims that Roman, a Romanian citizen, had managed to successfully launch a cyber attack against the “seventh-largest” cryptocurrency operator the world has to offer.

Sure that narrows it down, but the lack of clarity as to who it was is still interesting. The Romanian authorities state that this cyber-attack had occurred back in late January of this year.

According to the authorities, the accused had managed to do this by way of an unlawfully owned API code. Through this juicy bit of software, the accused allegedly managed to gain complete computer system access to this crypto operator.

Tiptoeing Only To Fall Flat

The announcement went into detail about how Roman had managed to make a successful transfer of cryptocurrencies across a number of wallets and addresses, all in a bid to hide the person behind the attack’s identity. In total, Roman had managed to gain a total of $620,000 in cryptocurrencies.

From there, all the crypto assets were transferred to various crypto trading platforms, from where Roman tried to capitalize on it.

In a bid to try and dodge authorities, which clearly didn’t work, the barber had continuously made transactions worth less than 10,000 Romanian Lei, which is the minimum amount needed to start producing documents as to why you would need to move that much money. Giving a quick number crunch, that’s around $2,449 in value.

Roman’s In Quite A Pickle

Now, how a barber of all people just happens to have the technical know-how to do this isn’t clear at first glance, but it does make for an interesting little event, in and of itself.

A lot of questions are to be asked with this little event, but Roman the Romanian is going to be in for a tough time explaining things. Authorities managed to cease 10,800 Lei from Roman’s home, ceasing various pieces of electronic equipment as well.