The men responsible for the $8.5 million hack in February 2023 of Platypus Finance, an Automated Market Maker (AMM) protocol in avalanche AVAX -2.25% have been acquitted of criminal charges by a French court, according to a report published in The world.
The defendants, whom Le Monde identifies as brothers Mohammed and Benamar M., were arrested just a week after the hack, after information from cryptocurrency detective ZachXBT and Binance helped lead French authorities to the brothers.
French authorities charged Mohammed, 22, with several charges related to the attack, according to Le Monde, while his brother was charged with receiving stolen goods. Prosecutors requested a five-year prison sentence for Mohammed, according to Le Monde.
However, the defendants were acquitted after Mohammed argued that he was an “ethical hacker”, who acquired the funds so that he could return them to the protocol later, in the hope of receiving a 10% bonus of the total sum.
In the course of flash loan attack, Mohammed mistakenly kept millions of dollars in stolen funds and was only able to recover about $270,000. Platypus was able to redeem $2.4 million in USDC through a counterattack also.
The court judges determined that since Mohammed was accessing a publicly available smart contract, charges related to unauthorized access to a computer system did not apply. Additionally, the court determined that Mohammed’s use of the Platypus “emergency withdrawal” smart contract, which had the vulnerability he was able to exploit, did not constitute fraud.
Since the fraud charges could not be applied, the court’s judges also dropped charges related to money laundering and receiving stolen goods, Le Monde reports. However, the judges also reminded the brothers that Platypus could still pursue them in civil court and said that although the criminal charges could not be sustained, the decision was not “a carte blanche.”
