Pereira-Bueno brothers
MIT-educated brothers walk free after $25 Million (£18 Million) crypto mistrial

It was the courtroom drama of the digital age. After four gruelling weeks, sleepless nights and even tears in the jury room, a Manhattan judge declared a mistrial on Friday, 7 November, in the $25 million (£18 million) cryptocurrency fraud case against brothers James and Anton Peraire-Bueno.

The MIT-educated siblings were accused of stealing roughly $25 million (£18 million) in cryptocurrency through a lightning-fast 12-second Ethereum blockchain transaction. What prosecutors called a calculated digital heist, the defence insisted was simply aggressive but legitimate trading.

As deliberations dragged into their third day, jurors told the court they were hopelessly split and could not reach a verdict.

'We Are Not Making Any Progress'

At 7 p.m., US District Judge Jessica Clarke brought the high-profile trial to an end after receiving a desperate note from the weary jury pleading to stop deliberations.

'There's nothing in the note to indicate that if I hold them over until Monday, that anybody will change the result here,' Judge Clarke told the parties before sending the jurors home.

The note revealed that the case had taken a heavy emotional toll, causing several jurors to suffer sleepless nights during the tense three-day deliberation. Half the panel even 'spontaneously broke down in tears' on Thursday.

'We are unanimously of the belief that we are not making any progress,' the note concluded.

According to Business Insider, the jury sent two separate notes on Friday saying they were unable to reach a verdict.

One juror later told prosecutors, 'It was understanding the law. Finding the appropriate standard was a struggle for us.'

What Was Needed to Find the Brothers Guilty

The Peraire-Bueno brothers faced three serious charges: wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and money laundering. Each charge carried a potential 20-year prison sentence.

To convict them, jurors needed to agree that the brothers had intentionally made at least one false representation to deceive others and obtain money.

Prosecutors alleged that in 2023, the brothers tricked three cryptocurrency traders out of $25 million (£18 million) in a complex 12-second transaction. They claimed the pair typed a series of invalid zeroes that "poisoned" a block of transactions they were meant to blindly add to the blockchain.

Prosecutors stressed that while the case was a "first of its kind," the law was clear.

'Whether on the phone, online, or on Ethereum, you can't tell a lie and deceive people to get their money,' said Assistant US Attorney Danielle Marie Kudla.

But the argument failed to sway the jury.

The Defence's Counter-Argument

The defence maintained that the brothers' automated trading bots merely outsmarted other traders in a high-risk, unregulated market.

'They took on risk and enjoyed tremendous success,' said defence lawyer Daniel Nathan Marx. 'They should be celebrated, not villainised by the prosecution.'

The case centred on so-called "sandwich attacks", a controversial cryptocurrency trading strategy that uses bots to place large trades before and after another user's transaction. The brothers claimed their use of open-source software was entirely within the rules, calling it fair game in an unregulated financial arena.

The Risks of an Unregulated System

The mistrial marks the third time this year that federal prosecutors have failed to secure a conviction in a major digital-asset fraud or money-laundering case.

In May, a federal judge overturned the jury's wire-fraud conviction of trader Avraham "Avi" Eisenberg, accused of stealing $110 million (£83 million) through a "pump-and-dump" scheme.

In August, another judge declared a mistrial in the $1 billion (£757 million) money-laundering case against Tornado Cash CEO Roman Storm.

For now, the Peraire-Bueno brothers remain free, their 12-second Ethereum trade still dividing the crypto world between those who call it fraud and those who call it genius.

Originally published on IBTimes UK