Hacker admits she stole 100,000 XRP in Australian crypto heist

An Australian woman has pleaded guilty to stealing more than 100,000 XRP, worth $450,000 at the time.

In January, 2018, Katherine Nguyen admitted hacking into the trading account of a 56-year-old man who shared the same surname. She locked the account and stole the funds before transferring them to a Chinese cryptocurrency exchange, swapping the XRP for Bitcoin, according to local reports. When the account was unlocked two days after the hack, the victim discovered his stash of XRP was gone.

Nguyen, 24, pleaded guilty on August 23. She’s looking at possible jail time, and hid her face from reporters as she left the courthouse.

“It's a very significant crime and it's the first we know of its type in Australia where an individual has been arrested and charged for the technology-enabled theft of cryptocurrency," Australian cybercrime Commander Arthur Katsogiannis told reporters in Sydney when she was charged last October.

The amount of stolen XRP, $450,000 at the time of the crime, is now worth just $26,700.