Three defendants went on trial in Paris on Friday 16 October over the Holograph (HLG) exploit of June 2024, when one billion HLG tokens were created out of nothing. The main defendant is described by Cryptoast as a Ukrainian national living in France and a former Holograph developer; a Le Figaro excerpt also describes him as a Ukrainian living in France. He is accused of using his old access to the protocol to mint the tokens and of cashing part of them out through exchange accounts. BFM TV and Cryptoast put the alleged loss at about €12.5 million. All three are presumed innocent, and the tribunal correctionnel de Paris has yet to rule on what, if anything, each of them did.
The hearings resume on Thursday 22 October and continue on Friday 23 October, Cryptoast reported, citing Le Figaro and Le Télégramme. No ruling date had been reported by midday UTC on 19 October.
Three defendants, one alleged former insider
Omerta Média reported on 17 October that the defendants are two men and a woman aged 27 to 36. Coindaro does not name them: none of the reports we could open does.
The main defendant was arrested in Italy and has been held in custody since September 2024, Cryptoast reported. According to the prosecution as reported by Cryptoast, he is charged with four offences: fraud (escroquerie), money laundering by an organised group, criminal association, and unauthorised access to an automated data processing system, the French charge usually brought in hacking cases. He has not been convicted of any of them.
The other two defendants appear before the court as free people, Cryptoast said, and are charged notably with money laundering and complicity. The reports we read do not say what role the prosecution gives each of them.
Accounts of the main defendant’s link to Holograph differ slightly. The headline of a BFM TV report, seen by Coindaro only as an excerpt, calls him a former employee. In July 2024, Holograph itself blamed “a disgruntled former contractor” in its post-mortem, according to Cointelegraph, without naming that person.
How the 1 billion HLG were allegedly minted on 13 June 2024
The prosecution case, as summarised by Cryptoast and by an AFP account relayed through Jinse and KuCoin, runs as follows. Using access he kept from his work on the protocol, the main defendant allegedly altered the token creation settings of Holograph’s smart contracts, minted about one billion HLG on 13 June 2024 and sent them to wallets he controlled. With the two other defendants, he is then accused of spreading the tokens across accounts on several exchanges. Le Figaro and Cryptoast place the alleged acts between May and August 2024.
The on-chain record of that day was reported at the time. Cointelegraph wrote on 14 June 2024 that an attacker used a flaw in Holograph’s operator contract to mint one billion HLG in nine transactions, seven of them batches of 100 million, the first at 09:47 UTC on 13 June. About four hours after the first mint, the attacker began swapping HLG for Tether (USDT).
Holders paid for it. HLG started falling about ten minutes after the first mint and lost 79.4% within nine hours, from $0.014 to a low of $0.0029, per Cointelegraph, before recovering to about $0.008. Its market value went from nearly $22 million to $4.8 million.
Holograph’s post-mortem of 2 July 2024, prepared with the security firm Halborn, said the person behind the mint had kept admin access to the version 1 contracts of Holograph Protocol and that this access was later used as a backdoor, Cointelegraph reported. That is the company’s account, not a finding of the court. Our glossary entry on the smart contract explains why whoever holds admin rights over a token contract can, in practice, issue new units.
€12.5 million on paper, about $1 million actually sold
The headline figure and the money that changed hands are far apart.
The €12.5 million in BFM TV’s headline and in Cryptoast is a face value. It is close to the $14.4 million that Cointelegraph gave in 2024 for one billion HLG at the price of the first mint. The prosecution puts the theoretical worth of the tokens at about $14 million, Cryptoast reported, adding that this sum does not necessarily match any gain.
What was actually sold is much smaller. According to Cryptoast, about 200 million HLG were resold, for a little over $1 million. Coindaro has found that detail in Cryptoast only.
A token only turns into money when someone buys it. Selling hundreds of millions of new HLG into thin markets pushed the price down by about 80% in hours, so every further sale fetched less. Part of the supply never reached a buyer: about 200 million HLG were frozen by the centralised exchanges the attacker used, and about 800 million stayed in circulation, Bitcoin.com reported on 20 June 2024. Holograph then started burning the surplus in tranches, beginning with 53,249,975 HLG, with the aim of bringing total supply back to 10 billion, the same report said.
| Item | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| HLG minted | 1,000,000,000 in nine transactions | Cointelegraph, 14 Jun 2024 |
| First mint | 13 Jun 2024, 09:47 UTC | Cointelegraph |
| Face value at mint | $14.4M | Cointelegraph |
| Alleged loss in French press | about €12.5M | BFM TV, Cryptoast |
| Prosecution’s theoretical value | about $14M | Cryptoast |
| HLG actually resold | about 200M, for a little over $1M | Cryptoast only |
| HLG price, first nine hours | $0.014 to $0.0029 (-79.4%) | Cointelegraph |
| Defendants | 3, aged 27 to 36 | Omerta Média |
| Hearings | 16, 22 and 23 Oct 2026 | Cryptoast |
Arrests in Italy, investigators in France
By mid-August 2024 there had been arrests. On 15 August, Cointelegraph relayed Holograph’s announcement that several people had been arrested in Italy with help from French authorities, and that significant assets and electronic devices had been frozen or seized. The suspects were not named and were expected to be extradited to France.
Holograph said the investigation was led by France’s anti-cybercrime office (OFAC) with the Brigade de répression du banditisme, Europol, Italy’s Direzione Investigativa Antimafia and the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service. Cryptoast describes the protocol as developed by a company based in the Cayman Islands.
It is not established whether the people arrested in Italy in 2024 are the same people now on trial in Paris. Cryptoast says the main defendant was arrested in Italy, but neither the 2024 announcement nor the trial reports we opened match the two groups name for name or in number.
Cross-border cases like this one are what the Council of Europe’s new treaty on seizing criminal crypto, signed by the EU and eight states, is meant to make easier.
Holograph is the complainant, and the defence is pointing at it
The Holograph Foundation brought the complaint. Its lawyer described the company as “complètement à l’arrêt” (completely at a standstill), Cryptoast reported, and said it was preparing a liquidation to repay its creditors after clients lost confidence in the project. The AFP account relayed by Jinse also says the breach cost the project its customers’ trust. A BFM TV excerpt says the company closed in December 2025, and Cryptoast cites a Holograph post of 10 December 2025 announcing that Holograph Terminal would shut on 17 December.
At the hearing, defence lawyers went after the company, according to Cryptoast. They criticised its silence during the investigation and said it had not handed over documents they had asked for. No other defence argument has been reported so far.
No source we opened gives a number of individual victims, the amounts claimed, the exchanges that received the tokens or how much was recovered.
Next hearings on 22 and 23 October; ruling date not known
The court sits again on Thursday 22 and Friday 23 October, according to Cryptoast. No report we found gives the sentences the prosecution will seek, and the date of the ruling is not known. Coindaro will update this story when they are.
The mechanism at the centre of the case keeps turning up elsewhere, from the 10 million CYS minted without backing on the Cysic bridge to the 39.8 million ARRR created by a Pirate Chain bug, though neither is linked to Holograph. Our guide on how to avoid crypto scams lists warning signs, including tokens whose supply a small team can change at will.