French Man Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison, Including 2 Years to Be Served, for Illegally Minting and Stealing 1 Billion HLG Tokens

ME News reports that on November 8 (UTC+8), a criminal court in Paris, France, sentenced a Ukrainian man to five years in prison, with two years to be served and three years suspended. He was accused of exploiting a vulnerability in the access controls of a company where he had previously worked to illegally mint and steal 1 billion Holograph (HLG) tokens between May and August 2024, worth approximately $14 million at the time.

The court found that the man illegally minted 1 billion HLG by tampering with the platform’s token minting conditions and transferred the tokens to his personal wallet. He then dispersed the funds across accounts on multiple cryptocurrency exchanges with two accomplices. The accomplices were sentenced to two years in prison, with 14 months suspended, and fined €80,000; and to two years of suspended imprisonment and a €40,000 fine, respectively.

The court also rejected the Holograph Foundation’s claim for compensation for losses resulting from the token’s price collapse, finding that HLG’s price had already fluctuated significantly and declined before the incident, and that no direct causal link could be established between the subsequent depreciation and the fraud. After the incident, HLG’s price fell from nearly $0.03 in May 2024 to $0.001 by the end of December that year. (Source: ChainCatcher)