Man Who Spent Millions on Rare Pokémon and Magic Cards Found Guilty of Stealing Over $50 Million in Crypto

A 36-year-old cybersecurity consultant and apparent trading card collector from Maryland was just convicted of computer fraud and money laundering in a case involving more than $50 million in stolen cryptocurrency. The U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday that Jonathan Spalletta was convicted of exploiting vulnerabilities in the code of the now-defunct crypto platform Uranium Finance, an exchange that allowed users to trade cryptocurrencies through liquidity pools. He later used some of the stolen funds to buy rare Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering cards, along with antique Roman coins. “Spalletta’s crimes cost real people to lose real money—over $50 million dollars—and caused an entire crypto platform to collapse,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jamie McDonald said in a press release. According to the indictment and evidence presented at trial, Spalletta first hacked Uranium Finance on April 8, 2021. At the time, he carried out a series of deceptive transactions with one of the platform’s smart contracts that allowed him to withdraw more “rewards” than he was authorized to receive. He repeated the transactions until he stole about $1.4 million. “I did a crypto heist of $1.5MM a couple of weeks ago . . . There was a bug in a smart contract, and I exploited it . . . Crypto is all fake internet money anyway,” Spalletta later told someone in writing. He then extorted Uranium into allowing him to keep roughly $386,000 as a “bug bounty” in exchange for returning the rest of the stolen funds. Then, on April 28, 2021, Spalletta carried out a second hack. This time, he exploited an error in Uranium’s code regarding how much cryptocurrency could be withdrawn from a liquidity pool. The vulnerability stretched across multiple pools, and he stole about $53.3 million in cryptocurrency, according to the DOJ. The theft ultimately caused Uranium Finance to shut down due to a lack of funds. Spalletta then laundered the stolen crypto through a complex series of transactions. What makes the case stand out even more is what authorities say he spent some of the money on. © Department of Justice For instance, Spalletta bought a “Black Lotus” Magic card for around $500,000, 18 sealed “Alpha Booster” Magic packs for about $1.5 million, a sealed first-edition Pokémon booster box for roughly $257,500, and a complete first-edition Pokémon base set for about $750,000. Beyond trading cards, he also bought a piece of fabric from the original Wright brothers’ airplane that was later taken to the moon by Neil Armstrong for roughly $137,500. © Department of Justice He also spent $601,545 on an “Eid Mar Denarius,” an ancient Roman coin commemorating the assassination of Julius Caesar. Authorities also seized cryptocurrency worth roughly $31 million from Spalletta in February 2025. Spalletta was convicted of one count of computer fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of ten years in prison, and one count of money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. His actual sentence will be determined by a judge next year.