Anton and James Peraire-Bueno, two brothers indicted for their alleged function in cash laundering and fraud involving a $25 million exploit of the Ethereum blockchain, may face a second trial as early as February.
In a Monday submitting within the US District Courtroom for the Southern District of New York, legal professionals representing the US authorities requested a federal choose schedule a retrial for the Peraire-Bueno brothers “as quickly as practicable in late February or early March 2026.”
The request happened three days after a choose declared a mistrial within the case, following the jurors’ incapacity to achieve a verdict.
The brothers had been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, cash laundering, and conspiracy to obtain stolen property associated to their function in utilizing maximal extractable worth (MEV) bots to take advantage of $25 million in digital belongings in 2023.
The case drew consideration from many within the crypto trade for the attainable ramifications of a responsible verdict on buying and selling on Ethereum. The brothers may nonetheless face many years in jail in the event that they had been to be discovered responsible at retrial.
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What may change in a second trial?
Jurors took greater than three days to deliberate earlier than reporting to the choose that they had been unable to achieve a verdict. Throughout that point, the jury asked several questions clarifying statements in testimony supplied at trial, in addition to the definition of “good religion.”
“Yesterday, half of the jury spontaneously broke down in tears, and a number of other members of the jury have reported a number of nights of sleeplessness,” in line with a letter filed on the general public docket on Monday. “Whereas this can be a lesser concern, now we have all endured the monetary and psychological hardship of being sequestered from our jobs and household for practically a month.”
As of Wednesday, the choose had not introduced a attainable retrial date.
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