The Peraire-Bueno brothers have been charged with fraud in a first-ever MEV bot exploit case. Here is what the DOJ claims they did to pull it off.
On May 15, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) charged two brothers, Anton and James Peraire-Bueno, with allegedly carrying out an attack on the Ethereum network that resulted in $25 million being transferred from maximal extractable value (MEV) bots to the defendants. The indictment claims that the attackers, through their Ethereum validators, proposed blocks whose ordering was so malicious that it constituted the crime of wire fraud.
The charges were revealed in a grand jury indictment that laid out the DOJ’s view.
The case has divided the crypto community. Some claim that the MEV bots were themselves attempting to defraud the brothers and that the defendants should not be seen as victims, while others say the brothers were in the wrong for exploiting bad code. Some have also argued that the case sets a dangerous precedent and will lead to full-scale regulation of Ethereum.
