The prime individual involved in Iceland’s famous Bitcoin heist was caught in Amsterdam by local police and promptly arrested.
A spokesman for the police said that Sindri Thor Stefansson was apprehended last night in the downtown area, but did not provide any other details regarding the arrest. At this moment, the thief is in custody awaiting extradition.
Over a month ago, Stefansson and his crew in Iceland stole 600 Bitcoin mining rigs, resulting in what is now one of the biggest cases of theft in the country’s history.
Valued at $2 million, the mining rigs were used by a “farm” that keeps them running to gain the pennies of profit that results from each system’s discovery of a block.
Along with Stefansson, 10 other people were arrested, including one of the security staff that was hired to protect the facility.
After his arrest, the mastermind spent time in a lax-security prison for 11 days before escaping with ease and flying to Sweden.
Sognið prison does not have any fences and provides its prisoners with unrestricted access to the outside world through mobile phones and the internet.
Authorities put Stefansson there because they deemed he posed no danger to society and therefore did not need higher-security facilities to contain him.
Nonetheless, he coincidentally ended up boarding the same flight to Sweden as Katrín Jakobsdóttir—the Prime Minister of Iceland—boarded on her way to attend a meeting with other Nordic heads of state.
How he managed to catch a flight to Sweden right out of prison is probably something that merits investigation, as criminals in most countries would automatically be stopped at the airport because their passports would make authorities’ systems throw flags.
Stefansson’s apprehension after his escape, however, might warrant him a harsher sentence in another prison, a situation that a heist’s mastermind should have seen coming.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
