A French man has been sentenced to 5 years in prison, including 2 years of actual imprisonment, for illegally minting and stealing 1 billion HLG tokens

Odaily reports: The Paris Criminal Court sentenced a Ukrainian man to 5 years in prison on Friday, including 2 years of actual imprisonment and 3 years suspended. The man was accused of exploiting permission vulnerabilities at his former employer between May and August 2024 to illegally generate and steal 1 billion Holograph (HLG) tokens, worth approximately $14 million at the time of the incident.The court found that the man illegally minted 1 billion HLG by tampering with the platform's token generation conditions, transferred the tokens to his personal wallet, and then, together with two accomplices, dispersed the funds across multiple cryptocurrency exchange accounts. His two accomplices were sentenced to 2 years in prison (including 14 months suspended) and an €80,000 fine, and 2 years suspended imprisonment and a €40,000 fine, respectively.Additionally, the court rejected the Holograph Foundation's claim for compensation for losses caused by the token price crash, ruling that HLG had already experienced significant price volatility and decline before the incident, and that it could not be established that the subsequent depreciation was directly caused by the fraud. Following the incident, the price of HLG fell from nearly $0.03 in May 2024 to $0.001 by the end of December of the same year. (tv5monde)