In Japan’s first such case of its kind, criminal charges are being sought over cryptocurrency lost through hacking, the country’s police said.

Local daily The Japan Times reported (Mar 15) of the national wire Kyodo News that an 18-year-old Japanese teenager has been “referred to prosecutors” in connection with the theft of 15 million yen ($134,600) worth in crypto last year.  

The boy is from Utsunomiya in Tochigi Prefecture and has not been named because he is a minor. He allegedly hacked Monappy – a currency storage website for the MonaCoin token, which is a Litecoin hard fork.

He claims he had found a security loophole on Monappy where sending multiple fund transfers within a short timeframe would cause problems to its system.  

“I felt as if I’d found a secret trick and thought I would take out all of the MonaCoin,” the boy said, describing how he felt about his discovery.

By causing Monappy to malfunction, the boy was able to transfer huge sums of crypto to his own wallet address. The crypto theft affected 7,700 Monappy users, to whom the firm has said it will reimburse.

To try and mask his tracks, the boy had used a Tor Browser, which is a US military-developed tool for securing communications. However, police were still able to trace him based on communication records on the website’s servers.