The Paris court sentenced a Ukrainian former employee of Holograph to five years in prison, of which three are suspended.

Case details

The defendant modified the token issuance rules and created 1 billion HLG tokens, which were valued at about $14 million at the time of minting.

He then transferred the newly created tokens to his own wallet, and together with two accomplices redistributed the funds across accounts on cryptocurrency exchanges.

Court finding on market impact

The court did not hold him responsible for the subsequent collapse in HLG price, noting that the token’s value had already fallen significantly before the unauthorized minting.

Judges distinguished the mechanics of the alleged theft from earlier market movements and limited criminal liability to the act of creating and transferring the tokens.

Legal outcome and sentence effect

With three years suspended from the five-year term, the practical custodial sentence equals two years, according to the ruling’s structure.

The decision reflects the court’s assessment of both the procedural changes to token issuance and the timeline of market pricing declines preceding the incident.