Indian police arrest woman who stole 64 bitcoins from her former employer

Police officials in India have arrested a woman who stole 64 bitcoins (worth about $430,000) from her former employer.

The 26-year-old woman, Ayushi Jain, worked for Bengaluru-based Bitcipher Labs and stole bitcoins earlier this year, the Times of India reported Friday.

Ashish Singhal, co-founder of Bitcipher Labs, noticed the irregularity and filed a complaint with police, which led to Jain’s arrest.

“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 that 63.5 bitcoins (Rs 36,662,259) were stolen and transferred through the exchange of SwapLab between January 11 and March 11,” Singhal was quoted as saying in the report.

It remains unclear what business does BitCipher Labs conduct. The Block has reached out to Singhal for comments and will update this story should we hear back.

Police took the woman into custody on Wednesday and have recovered all stolen funds. “We seized a laptop which contained the history, showing how Ayushi used the passphrase and stole money in installments between January and March. She confessed to the crime. By Thursday afternoon, we recovered the entire amount,” an investigating officer was quoted as saying in the report.

Another report from The New Indian Express suggests that Jain stole bitcoins to start her own crypto exchange and that she converted bitcoins into monero and later transferred them to her Binance account.

“The woman volunteered to transfer the stolen bitcoins back to their original owners, and it was done,” the police were quoted as saying in the report.