TechFlow News, March 31: According to The Block, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has charged Jonathan Spalletta, a 36-year-old man from Maryland, with two separate hacking attacks against the decentralized exchange Uranium Finance in 2021. Prosecutors allege that Spalletta first stole approximately $1.4 million via deceptive smart contract transactions, then exploited a vulnerability in the same contract weeks later to abscond with $53.3 million—causing the exchange to shut down permanently due to complete depletion of its funds.
The stolen funds were subsequently laundered and used to purchase millions of dollars’ worth of rare Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering trading cards, as well as an original fabric fragment from the Wright brothers’ airplane—the same piece that traveled to the lunar surface aboard the Apollo mission. Spalletta faces charges of computer fraud (carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years) and money laundering (carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years), for a combined maximum prison term of 30 years. U.S. authorities had previously recovered $31 million in cryptocurrency assets in February 2025.
