Jury convicts Jonathan Spalletta in Uranium Finance attacks

A Manhattan federal jury convicted Jonathan Spalletta of computer fraud and money laundering over two attacks on cryptocurrency exchange Uranium Finance in 2021. The verdict, announced October 7, followed a six-day trial. Spalletta was found guilty on both counts, according to federal prosecutors. Prosecutors said Spalletta exploited weaknesses in the exchange’s smart contracts to take cryptocurrency in two attacks. On April 8, 2021, he withdrew about $1.4 million through a flaw in a rewards mechanism, prosecutors said. They said he later kept about $386,000 under what they described as a sham bug-bounty arrangement, while returning the remainder. On April 28, prosecutors said, Spalletta exploited a separate error affecting withdrawals from Uranium’s liquidity pools and took about $53.3 million. The attack left the exchange without sufficient funds to continue operating, and the platform shut down. The two incidents involved about $54.7 million in total, based on the amounts cited by prosecutors. Authorities said Spalletta moved stolen cryptocurrency through a series of transactions, including the mixing service Tornado Cash.