Federal prosecutors say a Maryland man accused of draining more than $54 million from a fledgling crypto exchange blew a sizable chunk of the loot on high-end collectibles — including Pokémon cards, rare Roman coins and even a scrap of fabric linked to the Wright brothers’ airplane.
Jonathan Spalletta surrendered to authorities on Monday after the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York unsealed an indictment. Agents searching his home found the memorabilia, which have been seized. Prosecutors charged Spalletta with one count of computer fraud and one count of money laundering; if convicted on both counts he faces up to 30 years in prison.
The case centers on two hacks that hit Uranium Finance, a short-lived decentralized exchange built as a fork of Uniswap on the BNB blockchain, in April 2021. Both attacks occurred within weeks of each other and together emptied tens of millions of dollars in user funds, ultimately forcing the platform to shut down.
- April 8, 2021: An attacker exploited a smart contract flaw and walked away with roughly $1.4 million. According to prosecutors, a private agreement eventually led to the return of most of that money, leaving about $386,000 unrecovered.
- April 28, 2021: A far larger exploit allegedly followed. Prosecutors say Spalletta took advantage of a coding error in Uranium Finance’s withdrawal system and drained 26 liquidity pools in a single run, making off with approximately $53.3 million in Bitcoin, Ether and the exchange’s U92 token. The platform soon folded and users were left with little information and virtually no recourse.
Federal investigators have been working the matter for years. Authorities quietly recovered roughly $31 million in cryptocurrency tied to the hack in early 2025 but did not publicly explain that recovery at the time; Monday’s indictment provides more of the picture. Spalletta appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Ona Wang to be formally charged.
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton framed the prosecution as a reminder that theft in crypto is treated like theft in any other market: “Stealing from a crypto exchange is stealing — the claim that ‘crypto is different’ does not change that. For the victims, there is nothing different about having your money taken.” The indictment, Clayton added, is an effort to give the victims the accountability they’ve sought.
The Uranium Finance case is one chapter in a turbulent year for DeFi security: 2021 saw roughly $2.6 billion lost to exploits across the crypto ecosystem, including the high-profile $610 million Poly Network breach (the funds in that case were eventually returned). For Uranium Finance users, the wait for answers stretched nearly five years; the unsealing of charges against Spalletta may finally move the case toward resolution.
Featured image: Unsplash; chart: TradingView.
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