An Australian court has sentenced a female hacker to more than two years behind bars for stealing XRP tokens worth more than $300,000 back in 2018. The hacker, Kathryn Nguyen, will spend at least two years and three months in jail for her involvement in theft of more than 100,000 XRP tokens two years ago. Kathryn was initially indicted in October 2018 before pleading guilty to fraud charges in August 2019.
The August 11 report by the local media outlet Information Age indicates that the female hacker was sentenced to prison two years ago. According to the judge in charge of Nguyen ‘s case, Chris Craigie, the decision to send her to the bars was “difficult and troubling.” However, the hacker is said to have been granted probation by October next year.
First-ever cryptocurrency fraud hearing in an Australian court
Notably, the female hacker is among the first-ever to be charged with cryptocurrency fraud in an Australian court. According to reports, Kathryn Nguyen compromised the e-mail of a 56-year-old man who shared a surname with her and then succeeded in going through two-factor authentication. After taking control of the XRP holdings, she later transferred all the funds to a Chinese crypto exchange, where she exchanged them for BTC. Later, she transferred the BTC to several wallets, in what appeared to be an attempt at money laundering. It is reported that only $9,000 was recovered by the Chinese authorities. Nguyen surrendered control of the email account two days after the hack. Notably, back then, XRP had reached its highest-ever price of $3.84.
Ripple custody green light by NY authorities
The New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) released an updated list for cryptos for custody and listing last week. Eight digital currencies were added to the list, including Ripple’s XRP token. However, XRP was only approved for custody but not for listing.It is still not clear why the authority did not approve Ripple for listing for trading. However, it seems the legality of XRP; and the question surrounding its status as a security or a token might be the reason.