Just when it was thought the saga of failed Bitcoin exchange Cryptsy (Project Investors, Inc.) couldn’t get any more absurd, it has, with the founder of the company offering a reward to a hacker who is alleged to have stolen funds from the exchange.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer Paul “Big Vern” Vernon has posted a contract (pdf) titled “Cryptsy Recovering Bounty Final” on the Cryptsy website that promises to pay 1750 Bitcoin ($725,000) to “Cryptcracker,” the alleged hacker of 13,000 Bitcoin ($5.38 million) from the site should he or she return them.
The “contract” (we use the term loosely) also promises a further reward of 250 Bitcoin ($103,000) should the 247,000 Litecoins ($817,600) “stolen” be returned as well.
Vernon claimed in January that trojan malware was inserted into Cryptsy’s code by the developer of Lucky7Coin giving access to the company’s wallets, but more remarkably claimed this had occurred 18 months prior in 2014, and that instead of letting customers know what had happened, they had decided instead to continue trading in an effort to work their way back to solvency; even more funnily Vernon claims to have never reported the theft to authorities as he didn’t know who to report it to.
Since that announcement it has since been all but confirmed that the hacking story is a complete lie, with a copy of an affidavit Vernon made to a Florida divorce court in December being revealed where he stated under oath that the exchange had been able to stay afloat thanks to fee income, but that profits had dried up, leading to the exchange’s collapse.
http://siliconangle.com/blog/2016/03/13/rofl-cryptsy-offers-bounty-for-the-return-of-stolen-bitcoin-in-latest-piece-of-absurd-theatrics/
