The author of the scam against the Italian exchange BitGrail would be its own founder.
This news comes directly from the Italian Postal Police, according to which F. F. is the author of the biggest cyber-financial attack in Italy.
He is a 34-year-old from Florence and is considered responsible for the theft of the exchange he founded, for a total of about 120 million euros.
The alleged BitGrail scam
The scam would have affected more than 230,000 customers of the exchange, and took place in January 2018.
The investigations carried out by the Florence division began in February 2018, following a complaint filed by the same F. F., sole administrator of the platform, for a theft of RaiBlocks (XRB), now known as Nano (NANO).
The accusation of F. F. was directed towards a hypothetical bug of the RaiBlocks protocol, but despite his apparent cooperative conduct, the investigators from the beginning did not exclude his involvement in the affair, in particular because of conflicting and contradictory statements, even by some partners and collaborators.
BitGrail declared bankruptcy the following year, but in the meantime, investigators were able to trace 230 BTC that F. F. had in the meantime deposited in his personal account on the Italian exchange The Rock Trading (TRT) three days before filing the complaint.
These funds were seized by the Court of Florence and left in trust in custody on the exchange, to be then sold via OTC through TRT by the Trustee in Bankruptcy.
In reality, the subtractions of tokens to the detriment of the exchange took place over the course of months, beginning in June 2017, and it appears that F. F. did not knowingly prevent them.
In addition, in order to purchase XRB in the period between December 1st, 2017 and February 28, 2018, users allegedly paid a total of almost 600 million euros on the BTC exchange.
He is now charged with computer fraud, self-laundering and fraudulent bankruptcy, and a measure prohibiting him from carrying out business activities and holding executive offices in companies was enforced against him in an order issued by the judge Gianluca Mancuso.
