A former payroll manager, Ho Kai Xin, has been sentenced to nine years and 11 months in prison for stealing $4.2 million from the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit.

According to The Strait Times, Ho, 32, pleaded guilty to five counts of cheating, eight charges of benefiting from criminal conduct, and one count of providing false information to a public servant. In total, 30 charges were taken into account before sentencing.

Ho, who worked as an outsourced payroll manager for Bybit, used the funds she stole to fund a lavish lifestyle beginning in June 2022. Between October 2021 and October 2022, Ho manipulated Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to divert payments intended for Bybit employees into her own accounts. As part of her duties, she was responsible for handling payroll for about 900 employees.

In a separate case earlier this year, Ho received a six-week jail sentence for spending 840,000 SGD ($627,633) of the stolen funds on a luxury penthouse and designer goods, violating a court order to refrain from using the stolen money. She will serve this sentence before beginning her longer prison term.

How Ho Stole the Funds

The prosecution revealed that Ho transferred $4.2 million worth of cryptocurrency (5.7 million SGD) from Bybit Fintech into her own accounts. She used this money to purchase luxury items, including Louis Vuitton goods and a $2.7 million penthouse. Court documents show that Ho also made a down payment of about 750,000 SGD on the property.

Ho’s criminal activities began in May 2022, when she first stole 117,000 SGD from Wechain, the company handling Bybit’s payroll. She used the same method of manipulating payroll spreadsheets, redirecting funds to her personal bank accounts.

With her actions initially going undetected, Ho became bolder, continuing to defraud Bybit by altering payment details for around 900 employees. She had six bank accounts and four crypto wallets across different platforms, which she used to funnel the stolen funds.

From May to August 2022, Ho transferred $4.3 million worth of USDT (Tether) into her wallets, later laundering the funds to make them harder to trace.

Her scheme was uncovered in September 2022 when a Wechain finance director noticed unusual transactions in the payroll spreadsheet. After an internal investigation, Wechain reported the theft to the authorities, leading to her arrest in April 2023.

Ho’s conviction highlights the growing risk of insider theft in the crypto industry, where digital currencies are increasingly becoming the target of fraudsters who exploit gaps in systems and processes.

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