MEV Bot Exploits from MIT-educated siblings lead to $25 million crypto fraud exams

The judge denies the plea of two brothers to dismiss the crypto fraud accusations as they allegedly used the MEV bot to steal $25 million from the Ethereum blockchain. Why were their bids rejected?

District Judge Jessica Clark refused a motion to dismiss the fraud charges targeting Anton and James Perea Bueno, according to US court documents.

Apart from claiming that the wire fraud law doesn’t make it clear whether their actions are “permitted by the system’s code,” they also argued that they are being unfairly targeted by victims who trade bots in manipulative transactions.

“Each defendant’s motion for rejection will be denied in regard to accusations of stolen property,” the judge wrote in the document.

The judge said the reason their bid was rejected was due to “the failure to provide a fair notice, the failure to assert essential elements, and the failure to state essential facts.”

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Early in the proceedings, the brothers were first charged with conspiracy to receive the stolen property, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

However, the judge dropped the charges regarding a conspiracy to receive stolen property after the brothers cited a Justice Department memo on avoiding overregulation of digital assets.

Now that the motion to dismiss the charge has been denied, the brothers are on track to go to trial in October 2025. The court order was first issued by Judge Clark in August 2024.

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How did the brothers use the MEV bot to steal $25 million?

In April 2023, Anton and James Perea Bueno are said to have used their computer science knowledge to manipulate the largest extractable value or MEV bots to earn up to $25 million in chain funds within just 12 seconds. They set up a company called Pine Needle Inc. as a cover-up to carry out the plan.

According to the documents, the siblings created a detailed plan consisting of four steps: bait, block, search and propagation. They targeted 16 Ethereum Validators using 529.5 ETH (worth roughly $880,000) and implemented a scheme that attracted bots using “LeArt Transactions.”

“As expected, the victim trader’s MEV bot proposed eight bundles containing the Luart transaction and submitted to the builder. For each of these eight bundles, the victim trader purchased a coded frontrun transaction,” the judge wrote.

The stolen funds were then washed through bank deposits and scattered across eight different cryptocurrency addresses. The brothers used exchanges that don’t need to know your customer verification.

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