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Authorities have arrested a woman in India who stole 64 BTC ($400,000) from the company she helped co-found.
According to a report by the Times of India on Friday, 26-year-old Ayushi Jain was accused of stealing 64 BTC earlier in the year from her former employer, the Bengaluru-based Bitcipher Labs. Jain had jointly co-founded the firm in 2017 alongside Ashish Singhal, before leaving the company in December 2019.
Singhal says he first noticed an irregularity in the firm’s bitcoin wallet, which led him to file a complaint with the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).
He said, “Me, Vimal Sagar Tiwari and Govind Kumar Soni hold a hard wallet on behalf of BitCipher Labs. The private keys were held among the three of us. Recently, we found 63.5 bitcoins were stolen and transferred through the exchange of SwapLab between January 11 and March 11.”
Authorities took Jain into custody and searched her residence, where they discovered a laptop showing how the passphrase was used to steal the money in increments. Jain eventually confessed to the crime and the funds were recovered in full to their original owner.
