Ex-ByBit payroll chief jailed for nearly 10 years after stealing $5.7M in crypto fraud, funding luxury purchases. Millions remain unreturned.
A former payroll executive linked to ByBit has received a jail sentence of nearly ten years for her involvement in a large-scale cryptocurrency fraud. The person received a conviction after stealing $5.7 million through repeated transactions of corporate funds into their personal bank accounts.
The convicted party took advantage of her position at a Singapore-based fintech payroll department to operate ByBit’s payments system. She used her financial management position to hide the unauthorized fund transfers from detection. Through the misappropriated funds the offender purchased luxury designer items while obtaining a high-end penthouse apartment.
The investigations showed that unlawful transactions took place across the timeframe of 2021 through 2022. Smaller amounts of money formed the basis of the fraudulent plan that unknowingly accelerated until she went unnoticed. The victim received $4.2 million in cryptocurrency which she transferred to digital purses through an electronic conduit system before she exchanged it to traditional money.
ByBit Recovers Stolen Crypto, but Millions Still Missing
The employer representative filed a report to authorities, resulting in their involvement in the case. Law enforcement officials arrested the woman in 2023 after performing a thorough probe. The suspect tried to avoid responsibility by making up a false story about a nonexistent family member to investigators, but their story proved untrue.
Police recovered various luxury possessions during the process of recovering stolen assets along with seizing an expensive vehicle. The cryptocurrency along with stolen funds held at ByBit was successfully retrieved by the platform. A substantial sum of stolen funds has never been returned, even though the convicted party has failed to initiate any offers for repayment.
She already fulfilled a brief period of incarceration before her sentencing. Because she failed to comply with court instructions when she kept spending the stolen funds. The court decided that a harsher punishment should be imposed after her defense counsel described her circumstances to the judges. The situation demonstrates the weak points in digital asset management frameworks operated by financial organizations.
