Federal prosecutors have charged Maryland resident Jonathan Spalletta in connection with two hacks that drained more than $54 million from Uranium Finance, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that later folded. The unsealed indictment from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York says Spalletta exploited vulnerabilities in Uranium Finance’s smart contracts to withdraw funds beyond authorized limits. He surrendered to authorities after the indictment was announced.
Prosecutors say the intrusions forced Uranium Finance to cease operations and caused substantial losses to users. The U.S. Attorney’s Office emphasized that stealing from crypto platforms is treated the same as stealing from any other financial institution and noted the real financial harm to victims.
Uranium Finance, a BNB Chain fork of Uniswap, launched in April 2021. According to the indictment, an initial exploit on April 8, 2021, allowed an attacker to withdraw roughly $1.4 million in reward funds; a private arrangement later returned most of that sum, leaving about $386,000 unreturned. A second, larger exploit on April 28, 2021, manipulated withdrawal limits across 26 liquidity pools and led to the theft of approximately $53.3 million in assets, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and the platform’s U92 tokens. The platform’s site went offline after the second attack and victims say they received few answers.
Investigators allege some of the stolen proceeds were spent on collectibles and rare items. Law enforcement reports say items seized from Spalletta’s residence included Pokémon trading cards, antique Roman coins, and a piece of fabric reportedly associated with the Wright brothers’ airplane. In February 2025, authorities also seized about $31 million in cryptocurrency linked to the case.
Spalletta is charged with one count of computer fraud, carrying a potential sentence of up to 10 years, and one count of money laundering, carrying a potential sentence of up to 20 years. He was scheduled to be presented before U.S. Magistrate Judge Ona Wang to hear the charges.
The Uranium Finance incidents were part of a wider surge in crypto-related thefts in 2021, when attackers exploited protocols for an estimated $2.6 billion in losses. The largest incident that year involved a $610 million exploit of Poly Network; that attacker later returned nearly all funds and characterized the act as a white-hat operation.