2 men accept been arrested in Tokyo on suspicion of defrauding IT firm Vipstar Inc. from hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bitcoin (BTC), Mainichi reported on Jan. 23. One of the suspects is a former employee who used his access to steal money from a trading fund.

Yuto Onitsuka and Takuma Sasaki are accused of stealing 78 million yen (approximately $712,000) from Vipstar, a blockchain project. They are besides suspected of committing computer fraud and contravening a government deed on the command of criminal proceeds.

The police alleges that on October. 29, 2022, the suspects made 12 unauthorized entries in a trading business relationship that was managed past Vipstar, which is reported to take held the visitor's working capital. They transferred the funds to their own account.

Both suspects confessed, with Onitsuka citing disagreements with the company's management policy that compelled him to "try and ruin the company." The second doubtable, Sasaki, allegedly claimed to take acted on Onitsuka's instructions. The two men reportedly did not meet in real life, having struck up a chat over the internet in previous years. Onitsuka was the company's CTO, and had access to customers' accounts and login details.

The crime was discovered by Vipstar one calendar month afterwards, though it appears that the culprits were non immediately institute. Meanwhile, 1 of the men had allegedly withdrawn vi million yen ($54,000) to pay for his debts and a holiday.

What is Vipstar?

The project is a hybrid proof-of-stake and proof-of-work chain launched in early on 2022. Utilizing anime motifs and challenge to "reintroduce fun," the project's primary aim is to facilitate cross-border donations. Its GitHub page shows that it's an Ethereum (ETH) fork, though the actual code was forked from the HTMLCOIN repository.

Its token, VIPS, is currently ranked 616 on CoinMarketCap.