Crypto Bros claims that Trump change means that a $ 25 million fraud case should be thrown

Two brothers in charge of stealing $ 25 million to Ethereum launched a new legal defense in the federal court this week: their case must be rejected immediately, as they say, because new DOJ Crypto policy implies the property that they have been accused of stealing cannot really be considered ownership in the first place.

Last spring, the doj accused Anton and James Pepaire-Bueno, two MIT-trained coding whizzes, from operating the process with which the Ethereum network validates transactions to steal millions of dollars in ETH from traders. The brothers were initially accused of wire fraud and conspiracy to conduct money laundering. They were later accused of conspiracy to receive stolen property.

This week the lawyers of the brothers have one movement In the federal court of Manhattan that the whole case must be rejected – partly because of a doj memo, spread last week, which described how the department should be re -evaluate The Crypto Caseload under the Trump government.

The memo closes, among other things, the Crypto Enforcement team of the DOJ and outlined how the department should stop the pursuit of criminal cases in various areas with regard to digital assets.

Lawyers for the Pepaire-Bueno brothers took a special bill of a passage in the memo who stated that the DOJ “is not a digital asset regulator” and “will no longer pursue process or enforcement actions that have the effect of the on top of legal frameworks for digital assets.”

The lawyers now claim the insistence of DOJ to refrain from weighing the securities status of various crypto assets means that public prosecutors can no longer claim that the brothers of Pepaire-Bueno have committed several of the crimes accused of execution.

One of the charges with which the brothers are currently confronted, for example – CoSpiracy to receive stolen ownership – is now disputed, the lawyers say. Why? Because if the DOJ cannot decide whether crypto assets are effects, they cannot claim that such assets meet the legal definition of ownership, whether they have been stolen or not. That is the argument anyway.

The Doj refused to comment on this story when he was investigated about the possible merits of that argument.

The American district judge Jessica GL Clarke, who supervises the case, will now weigh whether it is to weigh the motion of the defendants to dismiss.

Since the DOJ has publicly revised its policy for digital assets, speculation has been abundant about what the development could mean for active criminal matters involving market leaders. Of particular importance is the current case of the United States against Roman stormA founder of Crypto Privacy Service Tornado Cash.

In 2023, the American law enforcement storm and accused him of helping Noord -Korea in the money laundering of hundreds of millions of dollars in digital assets – effectively by not limiting access from the state to the platform.

However, last week’s Doj Crypto Memo ordered prosecutors In retrospect only “enemy groups” that use crypto and “do not pursue actions against the platforms that these companies use to carry out their illegal activities.”

From Wednesday a DOJ spokesperson told DecryptStorm’s case is still ready to go to court this summer.