French police have arrested two suspects in connection with Platypus’ $9.1 million embezzlement, and 210,000 euros worth of cryptocurrency has been seized, according to local authorities.
The investigation leading to the arrest was supported by Detective ZachXBT and crypto exchange Binance, Platypus said. The decentralized protocol was compromised in three separate flash loan attacks by the same exploiter on February 16.
[#Cybercriminalité]The #PoliceNationale puts an end to a major fraud for 9.5 million damage to US cryptocurrency companies.
Arrest and summons to court of 2 persons
seizure of €210,000 in cryptocurrencies#Federal Police pic.twitter.com/rKKuG95cWh— Police Nationale (@PoliceNationale) February 24, 2023
The attacks led to the theft of several stablecoins and other digital assets. The first attack resulted in the theft of approximately $8.5 million worth of property. In the second incident, approximately 380,000 assets were mistakenly sent to the Aave v3 contract. Approximately $287,000 was stolen as a result of the third attack. The attack resulted in the Platypus USD (USP) stablecoin being delinked from the US dollar.
The perpetrators used the flash loan method to explore a logic flaw in the USP’s collateral-holding solvency control mechanism, Platypus recently confirmed. Stable swap operations were not affected.
Lightning attack is the same method used from Mango Market exploiter Avi Eisenberg, who claimed responsibility for manipulating the price of the MNGO coin in October 2022. After the exploit, Eisenberg said that “all of our actions were legal actions on the open market using the designed protocol.” Eisenberg was arrested in Puerto Rico on fraud charges on December 28.
Platypus announced a plan to return the funds to affected users on February 23. According to the protocol, 63% of the main fund will be returned within six months. According to the plan, the remining of frozen stablecoins could lead to a return of 78% of the funds. “If our proposal to Aave is approved and Tether confirms the frozen USDT reminder, we will be able to recover approximately 78% of user funds,” the protocol states.
