Nomad to crypto thieves: Please give us back 90%, keep 10% as a reward. Deal?

Cryptocurrency bridge Nomad sent a message to the looters who drained nearly $200 million in tokens from its coffers earlier this week: return at least 90 percent of the ill-gotten gains, keep 10 percent as a bounty for discovering the security flaw, and Nomad will consider this a "white-hat" hack, as opposed to plain old theft …

[Howard Sway]

Please send the funds to the official Nomad recovery wallet address on Ethereum: 0x94A...

Seriously, they're asking people to send millions of dollars to address x in a fucking tweet?

@nomadxyz_ sure looks like an official company account to me..........

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Please send the funds to the official Nomad recovery wallet address on Ethereum: 0x94A...

Oh, I don't know. It looks pretty much like cryptocurrency industry standard operating practice to me.

[JassMan]

Re: Please send the funds to the official Nomad recovery wallet address on Ethereum: 0x94A...

And how do we know that once the funds are returned to the "Nomad" wallet, that they will be distributed back to the original owners, not the CFO's account who then disappears to tax haven.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Please send the funds to the official Nomad recovery wallet address on Ethereum: 0x94A...

Shirley no crypto CFO would do that?

[Pascal Monett]

"we took some additional time to make sure we considered the complexities"

Too bad you didn't take additional time to consider complexities when you set up your useless infrastructure.

Return the money ?

So, not only are you incompetent, but you also believe in Santa Claus ?

Go ahead and file a complaint. I wish you luck.

[Anonymous Coward]

What will be the basis of the legal action?

"You executed a valid contract based on the rules of the token, in a way we don't like?"

[Brad Ackerman]

Control of a cryptocurrency wallet is irrelevant to whether a transfer of ownership has been perfected. The government doesn't give a flying toaster what a smart contract does when deciding if someone has broken the law.

[doublelayer]

"What will be the basis of the legal action?"

Manipulating a system to gain possession of property you aren't entitled to. Courts deal with this all the time, and they're not going to take "The code had a bug so it's all cool" as a defense. Even if you see this as ridiculously bad security, it's still illegal to walk into a building whose door is standing open and take things, and while the owner probably won't be getting sympathy or an insurance payout, the taker can still go to prison for it. Some early cryptocurrency people might have enjoyed saying "the code is law", but the real law doesn't tend to think so.

[Peter2]

I don't know about the US, but this is a copy and paste of section 1 of the Theft Act 1968

Basic definition of theft.

(1)A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and “thief” and “steal” shall be construed accordingly.

(2)It is immaterial whether the appropriation is made with a view to gain, or is made for the thief’s own benefit.

Therefore dishonestly appropriating crypo coins is stealing and the person doing it is a thief by British legal definitions so they could be done as a common thief.

Since basically the entire US legal system (including large chunks of their constitution and bill of rights) are largely a copy and paste of the British legal system as it stood in the law books they had in 1776 it would be surprising if their acts regarding theft are massively divergent from that.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, Crime does pay then?

If this is allowed then expect this strategy to be widely adopted by Insiders running Ponzi Schemes.

[Ian Johnston]

What theft? The people who removed the money used a public interface to do something it allowed. Code is law, people.

[that one in the corner]

Did you forget to add the <sarcasm> tag?

[Anonymous Coward]

Accounts frozen

Let it go

Let it go

Can't hold it back anymore

Let it go

Let it go

Turn away and slam the door

[Anonymous Coward]

Tax...

Who pays the tax on this 10% payout?

[veti]

Re: Tax...

The people who get it, obviously. That's their responsibility anyway, nothing changes except that it's 90% less.

[doublelayer]

Re: Tax...

The criminals who stole it. You can report additional income, source criminal activity to your country's tax authorities. If you don't, you can be charged with tax evasion as well as theft.

If you're willing to break more laws than just the theft ones, but not tax evasion, you can also set up a system to launder it. On successful laundering of it, you'll likely have paid tax at least once and probably twice as a business and in your personal capacity.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Tax...

The US doesn't require specifying the source of "additional income", so you don't even have to admit that much to the tax authority.