According to The Information, MoonPay never disclosed that $150 million of the Series A funding was used to purchase shares from insiders including Soto-Wright, and never went to the company. Several weeks after the funding round, Soto-Wright purchased a $38 million Miami mansion.
MoonPay executives pocketed $150 million raised from Series A
Apparent whitehat exploits El Dorado Exchange, claiming developers built in a backdoor to steal user funds
The attacker promised to return all funds, minus a 10% "white hat fee", if the developers "admit to manipulating the prices", and also offered to disclose other vulnerabilities they claimed to have found in the project.
The project founders wrote in response: "Yes we acknowledge making an ill-advised decision to manipulate the price. However our intention was to blacklist those who had previously exploited the system, fully aware that all transactions are recorded on the blockchain. We did not aim to misappropriate users funds as this would leave a traceable record. We will promptly remove the problematic bomb contract."
The exploiter began returning funds shortly afterwards.
BKEX crypto exchange halts withdrawals due to money laundering investigation
The exchange offered no estimate of when withdrawals might be re-enabled.
Coinone employees "admit to facts" in case regarding token listing bribes
Four executives were arrested in connection to the investigation in April, under suspicion that they had received ₩2.4 billion (~$2.2 million) in bribes in exchange for listing dozens of coins.
Coinone is one of the most popular South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges. In July 2022, it was among the seven exchanges raided by Korean authorities in the wake of the Terra/Luna collapse, as the country began applying harsher scrutiny to crypto platforms.
Morgan DF Fintoch likely exit scams for around $31 million
On May 23, crypto sleuth zachxbt tweeted that the project appeared to have executed their exit scam, bridging around 31.6 million Tether to various addresses. Platform users began to report that they could not withdraw funds.
Croatian cryptocurrency investment company BitLucky reportedly collapses; more than $75 million allegedly missing
Some have expressed the opinion that BitLucky was a Ponzi scheme all along, given the unreasonable promises of 5–25% monthly returns. The editor of a crypto news outlet also expressed that "there was a 'line of [red] flags'", including that Burazer never wanted to appear in the media or have his picture shown online.
- "Najveća domaća kripto prevara? Riječanin klijentima uzeo 70 milijuna €. Upravo je u bijegu", Jutarnji list (in Croatian)
Coin Cafe to pay $4.3 million restitution after instituting high fees without informing customers
The New York Attorney General found that Coin Cafe's misleading fee structure was still in effect even after the company obtained a BitLicense from the Department of Financial Services.
Former Fabric CFO accused of siphoning $35 million into his crypto startup and losing it all
According to the grand jury indictment, Shetty planned to put the funds into cryptocurrency positions that "could have yielded returns of 20 percent or more annually", and planned to return 6% to Fabric, keeping the difference. This so-called "investment" contradicted the conservative investment strategy that Shetty had helped to draft for Fabric, and he concealed both the existence of the transfer and his involvement with HighTower.
Shetty "lost virtually all of [Fabric's] money" "within a matter of weeks", at which point he fessed up to Fabric. Shetty had placed all of the funds into protocols based around the Terra stablecoin, which collapsed dramatically only a month later.
Shetty has pled not guilty, and has been released on bond.
South Korean legislator Kim Nam-kuk resigns over allegations of improper crypto dealings
Other concerns arose regarding the discovery of the assets. Some were worried about possible conflicts of interest, particularly in relation to Kim's 2021 proposal of a bill that would delay taxation of crypto profits. Others were worried about the source of the funds used by Kim for crypto trading; Kim claims he did not receive money from anyone to use for trading, and obtained the money through the sale of stocks.
On May 10, the Democratic Party recommended Kim sell his crypto holdings, and launched an investigation. Kim said later that day that he would perform the sales, and "transparently disclose data to the investigation team and undergo the inquiry faithfully".
On May 14, Kim resigned from the Democratic Party "for a while", continuing to deny the allegations but expressing wishes to not burden the party and its members over the controversy.
The subsequent day, Korean authorities raided the offices of Korean crypto exchanges Bithumb and Upbit in connection to the scandal, seeking transaction records and other information. Kim was reported to use those services for his crypto wallets.
CZ smacks down Justin Sun for trying to game SUI airdrop
Indeed, it later turned out that Sun's team had farmed around 279,000 SUI (SUI does not yet have a reliable dollar price because it is set to launch later this month). Sun blamed the event on a TUSD market maker, writing, "Regrettably, some of our team members were not fully aware of the intended purpose for these funds and inadvertently used a portion of them to participate in exchange campaigns. Upon realizing this error, we immediately contacted the exchange team and arranged for a full refund of the funds." Those replying to his comment seemed more than a little skeptical that the incident was truly a mistake.