Maryland man convicted of stealing $50 million in cryptocurrencies. He spent it on Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering cards

The Justice Department says Spalletta used the money obtained in the scheme, after laundering it, to purchase rare Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon cards, along with antique Roman coins and other oddities.

Gotta catch ‘em all

Those purchases weren’t your run of the mill rarities. Prosecutors say he bought a “Black Lotus” Magic Card for approximately $500,000 as well as 18 packs of sealed “Alpha Booster” Magic Cards for approximately $1,512,500, one sealed box of first edition “Booster” Pokémon Cards for approximately $257,500 and one first edition complete base set of Pokémon Cards for roughly $750,000.

That’s over $3 million in collectible cards.

That ancient Roman coin? It was an “Eid Mar Denarius,” which commemorates the assassination of Julius Caesar and sold for $601,545. Also among the unusual purchases was a piece of fabric from the original Wright brothers’ airplane that Neil Armstrong took to the surface of the moon. Spalletta paid approximately $137,500 for that, the Justice Department said.

‘Fake internet money’

Spalletta was convicted of one count of computer fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison as well as one count of money laundering, which carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence.

Prosecutors say he hacked Uranium Finance two times in April of 2021, using vulnerabilities in the code to take $1.4 million in cryptocurrency the first time and $53.3 million the second. The second hack forced the company to shut down.

At his trial, prosecutors presented jurors with messages Spalletta sent to another person, saying “I did a crypto heist of $1.5M a couple of weeks ago . . . There was a bug in a smart contract, and I exploited it . . . Crypto is all fake internet money anyway.”

The crypto world has seen a rash of thefts in recent years, resulting in successful prosecutions.

A Brooklyn man was sentenced to 12 years in prison last month for stealing nearly $16 million in a cryptocurrency scheme. And that same month, the Justice Department announced a Singapore citizen had pleaded guilty to being the ringleader in a criminal conspiracy that stole and laundered over $245 million in cryptocurrency, using those funds to buy luxury handbags, watches and clothing and rent private jets and homes. The group also spent as much as $500,000 on nightclub services — per evening.