In een crypto-overval: Hamilton-jeugd die opnieuw $ 48 miljoen stakingen heeft gestolen

In the summer of 2022, a young, restless youth appeared in a courtroom in Hamilton to express deep remorse for stealing $48 million in cryptocurrency. He stated, “I am committed to moving forward in a positive direction.”

His lawyer mentioned that the 19-year-old now wanted to utilize his skills for good by working in cybersecurity, a fitting way for this case to come full circle.

The judge sentenced the young man to a year of probation, taking into account the time he had already spent in custody and the fact that he was 17 when he committed the act. The young man, who cannot be named under the Canadian Youth Criminal Justice Act, was prohibited from dealing with crypto during his probation – not a significant deprivation, admittedly, but certainly detrimental to the career of a young cybercriminal.

Did the young man truly, in his words, “take this time to reflect on my actions and learn from mistakes”?

Consider this: Authorities linked the 2020 theft as the largest crypto ever stolen from an individual. It is a matter of contention how big a role the young man played and how much of the $48 million he still possessed. However, police would later reveal that, in the same month he was convicted, the young man privately boasted about his heist and claimed he still held $15 million.

Moreover, during that probation period, the young man who promised he would never do it again, in fact, did: he perpetrated a separate, high-profile crypto heist.

On July 29 of this year, the young man, labeled by prosecutors as a ‘sophisticated, successful, and repeat cybercriminal,’ appeared before a judge again. This time it was in Alexandria, Va., and he was sentenced to a year in prison.

This series of heists garnered only about $800,000, but it garnered international attention and shook the crypto world. The 2022 heist targeted influential accounts on what was then called Twitter dealing in NFT Digital Art.

The targets included “PiePle,” known for selling a record $69 million NFT (non-fungible token), which is based on the blockchain technology of Crypto. Once compromised, those accounts ran up their followers on crypto and NFTS. No one knew then that behind the heist was this young man from Hamilton.

The case not only shines a spotlight on the young crypto industry, estimated to be worth more than $4 trillion, but also the rising cybersecurity threats as more of our lives move online. Court documents in the case, recently unsealed, shed light on the dynamics among hackers and scammers, almost always young men, and underscore a timeless truth: there is no honor among thieves.

The young man’s parents separated when he was 18 months old. He grew up with an absent father and in a household under financial strain. During his school years, he was ‘socially isolated, bullied for his weight,’ writes the defense in a plea. A psychological evaluation showed that the young man “experienced emotional neglect, chronic instability, and trauma” that “made him particularly vulnerable to the influence of others.”

However, the prosecution had a different story. “The suspect was responsible for the ‘social engineering’ aspects of the fraud schemes. In other words, it was his job to manipulate and deceive,” prosecutors wrote. “He appears to be quite skilled at handling and reading people.”

The earlier $48 million heist had been a SIM-swap, in which perpetrators deceive telecommunications companies to transfer victims’ mobile phone numbers to SIM cards they control. With that phone number, scammers then break into the owners’ other accounts, such as Crypto.

According to the defense, when the young man was on bail for the $48 million heist, he was “unsupervised and experimenting with dangerous narcotics introduced to him by another juvenile in the detention facility.” This was when he decided to use another scam method: breaching Twitter, now X.

It is unclear how the young man exactly took the next step. Neither his lawyers in the United States nor his former lawyer in Canada responded to requests for comment. But the general idea is no secret.

In June, the Globe and Mail reported on the black market of social media insiders selling their access – for example, to recover banned profiles – as these accounts become increasingly valuable. Somehow, the young man had gained access to a special platform on Twitter called the “Partner Support Panel.” It was intended for insiders and “entities associated with large or important clients” and provided expedited assistance in matters such as password resets.

The young man’s first target was the artist Pieple, real name Mike Winkelmann. Court documents do not explicitly name Mr. Winkelmann, but they showed the content of the fraudulent tweets that followed, which could be traced back to posts on his account at the time. Mr. Winkelmann was also publicly identified by Zachxbt, a pseudonymous crypto sleuth who first named the young man from Hamilton as the perpetrator.

After taking over Mr. Winkelmann’s Twitter account, along with a fellow scammer, the young man posted a message with a link to a “lottery.” Users were required to send one ether, a cryptocurrency running on the Ethereum network worth about $2,000 at the time. Winners would receive Louis Vuitton brand NFTs.

Of course, there were no winners. When users clicked on the link, they were directed to a fraudulent website to connect their digital wallets to participate in the lottery. Instead of sending one ether or receiving an NFT, victims would essentially give the green light for their entire digital wallets to be drained.

Or at least, that was how the scam was supposed to go. The website “encountered issues with stealing NFTs and cryptocurrency,” according to the prosecution. The reason remains unclear. Perhaps there were technical difficulties. Perhaps the fraudulent website to which the scam link led was poorly built and looked suspicious to the crypto crowd.

The young man knew how to take over people’s phone numbers and accounts. But he was not a crypto expert. However, he would up his game quickly with the help of someone else.

Court files do not name this person and only describe him as a U.S. resident who “indicated he had a better drain that would steal” from the victims’ digital wallets.

This accomplice, who apparently had more know-how in this area than the young man, would also build a replica of Mr. Winkelmann’s website with a similar address. When people visited the scam link to transfer their digital assets, as long as they didn’t pay too much attention to the browser’s address bar, they would still think they were on the legitimate site of the artist.

This heist was relatively successful, yielding 80 victims and nearly $450,000. But the technically savvy accomplice who built the replica website never split the loot as agreed. The young man was betrayed.

The young man then calibrated his methods. In a gold rush, the man who sells shovels has a more guaranteed income than the one who digs. In war, the safest side is that of the arms dealer.

Instead of relying on the indisputable technical accomplice, the young man would focus on the advantage he already had: the means to steal.

In June 2022, he sold his access to the Twitter panel to another young scammer, who the court did not name but described as a U.S. resident and a minor. The price was 230 ethers – then worth over $280,000 – and 10% of the loot from each future heist. It would be exclusive, meaning the young man from Hamilton would not sell that access to anyone else.

The deal was sealed on June 27, three days after the young man told a court in Ontario how sorry he was for stealing $48 million in crypto.

It was clear he was not quite ready to walk away from his life of crime. Perhaps the young man from Hamilton, who had started scamming when he was a minor, saw a bit of himself in the American minor. He became what the prosecution called a ‘mentor’ to the minor. The pair teamed up with other scammers and struck four times. The targets can be traced back to the accounts of Deekay, Zeneca, Nouns DAO, and JRNY Club, all prominent artists or collectives in the NFT world.

For the uninitiated, those names might not mean much, underscoring the vast scale and rapid growth of the crypto world. It started with just Bitcoin in 2009, then worth cents, and in just over 10 years, one unit is worth over $100,000, and the combined value of the thousands of other coins is worth over $4 trillion. Banks and governments are dabbling in the technology. Whatever one thinks of the asset, it cannot be denied that the money and jobs in it are real.

Yet, the danger is also real. When objects that can be irreversibly moved with the click of a mouse are so valuable, an entirely new breed of criminal evolves to take advantage. According to Chainalysis, a blockchain data firm, nearly $3 billion in crypto was stolen by the end of June 2025, setting the stage for this to be a record year.

Amid the four new crypto heists, the dynamic duo of the young man from Hamilton and the American minor began to unravel. At some point, perhaps still reeling from the earlier betrayal by the tech-savvy accomplice Ringer when he failed to split the loot, the young man did to others what had been done to him.

While the details are unclear, court records show that the young man “double-crossed” the American minor for a bigger cut. Then, police say, he tried to sell his access to the Twitter panel to others, even though he had promised exclusivity.

But it would prove to be a futile move. The value of that Twitter panel declined. One can only run the same scam so many times before people catch on. Additional heists were increasingly unsuccessful, with one fraudulent tweet being removed within minutes. Eventually, the Twitter panel stopped working altogether. X did not respond to a request for comment.

As the scam dried up, the young man left that world behind, said Defense. “In 2023, he traveled to Portugal at the strong urging of a friend,” the defense wrote. Post-pandemic, Portugal had introduced a new visa for digital nomads, with affordable rents, vibrant social scenes, and mild winters. It was the place to be. For the young man, it was “the first time in years that he began to form real personal relationships and experience a world outside the computer.” There, the young man ‘found companionship and purpose’ and enrolled in a computer programming course.

However, paradise was soon lost. First, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation went after the people around the young man. The American minor, who had been deceived and lied to by the young man, would eventually cooperate with the FBI. Thus, the technically savvy accomplice who had once burned the young man – he would burn him again and provide information to the FBI in exchange for immunity.

In December 2024, the young man was arrested. He was extradited to the U.S. in March, where he struck a deal and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft.

It is an open question what awaits him when he is eventually deported to Canada. He clearly violated the terms of his probation for the $48 million heist when he carried out this new series of scams. That risks legal consequences.

The Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General referred questions to the police. The Hamilton Police Service, the force that first arrested the young man in the $48 million case, did not respond to a request for comment.