Paris court jails Holograph HLG minter: 5 years, 2 to serve, for 1 billion tokens worth $14 million, and the foundation's damages claim is rejected

What the court decided

The verdict reports from Odaily and ChainCatcher give the same figures. The court found that the man used access gained while working for the company to alter the conditions under which HLG could be generated, created 1 billion tokens without authorization between May and August 2024, and moved them to his own wallet. With two accomplices, he then spread the proceeds across accounts on several crypto trading platforms.

Friday was November 6 on the calendar; the reports call it Friday without giving the date. Both outlets name TV5Monde as their source. We could not open the TV5Monde page directly (it returned HTTP 403 to our request), so the verdict figures rest on the two Chinese-language reports and their attribution.

How the mint happened, from the trial

The trial opened on Friday, October 16, before the tribunal correctionnel de Paris. French outlet Cryptoast covered it on October 19, citing Le Télégramme and Le Figaro. Journal du Coin covered it the same day, citing AFP.

According to those reports:

• The main defendant is a Ukrainian national living in France and a former developer at Holograph Foundation, a company based in the Cayman Islands.
• He faced charges of fraud, organized money laundering, criminal association and unauthorized access to an automated data system, the French offence used in hacking cases.
• He was arrested in Italy, handed to France and has been held since September 2024. The other two appeared free, charged with laundering and complicity.
• On June 13, 2024, the tokens were created by manipulating the protocol's smart contracts, then sent to wallets he controlled.
• About 200 million of the 1 billion HLG were actually sold, for more than $1 million.
• On June 13, 2024, HLG fell nearly 80% within hours, from about $0.014 to under $0.003.

The numbers fit together. $14 million for 1 billion tokens is $0.014 each, the pre-crash price Cryptoast gives. Selling 200 million for "more than $1 million" works out to over $0.005 per token on average, our arithmetic, which shows how far the price fell while the tokens were being sold. The $14 million headline is a theoretical value. The cash actually realized was closer to $1 million.

Timeline

What the defence argued

From the first hearing, the defence went after the company that brought the complaint. Cryptoast reports that defence lawyers criticized Holograph for staying silent during the investigation, the phase run by an investigating judge before trial, and for not producing documents they had asked to see at the hearing. Journal du Coin reports the same complaint about the foundation's cooperation.

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Journal du Coin also notes a gap in the public record. The AFP dispatch did not set out exactly which technical changes the defendant made, which access he used or which contract functions were involved. The reports describe the result, an unauthorized mint, without the code-level detail. That matters for anyone trying to learn from the case: how the defendant was able to change the mint conditions has not been made public.

The verdict sits between the two positions. The court convicted all three defendants, so it accepted the core of the prosecution's account. It also refused to treat the whole price collapse as damage caused by the fraud, which is closer to the defence's line that the project was already in trouble.

Why the foundation got nothing

The damages ruling is the part with the widest reach. Holograph Foundation argued the crash was caused by the fraud. The court disagreed. According to the verdict reports, it held that HLG's price had already swung and fallen sharply before the events, so it could not link the later loss in value directly to the fraud.

The reports cite AFP data putting HLG near $0.03 in May 2024 and at $0.001 at the end of December 2024. That is a fall of about 96.7%, our arithmetic. Part of it happened before June 13 and part after.

At the trial, Holograph's lawyer described the company as "completely at a halt" and preparing for liquidation, according to Cryptoast and Journal du Coin. That was the company's own account, not a finding of the court. A tweet from Holograph embedded in the Cryptoast article, dated December 10, 2025, said it would sunset Holograph Terminal on December 17 and asked stakers to withdraw their HLG.

Where HLG trades now

We queried the public market APIs of four exchanges at about 10:50 SGT on November 8, 2026:

CoinGecko's public price endpoint returned $0.0000021 for HLG with about $2.92 of 24-hour volume, but its last update timestamp was June 26, 2026. In plain terms, the token has no meaningful market on the major venues, and the court has now said the foundation cannot recover its losses from the defendants.

What this means for traders

The case is old as a hack and new as a ruling. Three lessons apply to tokens you hold today.

A mint bug is worse than a theft. A theft moves tokens that already exist. An unauthorized mint adds supply, and here it added 1 billion tokens that were then sold into thin markets. If a project's contract lets someone with access change who can mint, a holder carries that risk even when no wallet is drained.

A conviction is not a refund. The court punished three people and fined two of them a combined €120,000. It did not order compensation for the price collapse. If you lose money on a token after an exploit, do not assume a later criminal case will pay you back.

Delisting ends your exit. With HLG removed from the large exchanges, holders have few places to sell. When a token you hold suffers a supply exploit, watch the exchange notices for deposit suspensions and delisting dates, because that window is usually when you can still sell on a liquid venue.

How to check a token before you buy it

Before buying a small-cap token on a centralized exchange, a few checks take minutes:

1. Open the token's contract on the chain's block explorer and compare the total supply with the figure the project publishes.
2. Look for a mint function and who controls it: a single key, a multisig, or nobody.
3. Check whether supply jumped recently. An unexplained jump is a reason to stop.
4. Check the exchange's own page for the asset's deposit and withdrawal status before you send funds.

If you trade on OKX, our OKX fees and sign-up page lists current spot and futures fees. Register with invite code nexu888 and 20% of your OKX trading fees comes back, settled hourly, according to our partner registry: a $5,000 spot buy at the 0.10% taker rate costs $5 in fees, and $1 returns to you. That does not change the risk of what you buy, so run the four checks above first. Our OKX profile also shows how its spot and futures fees compare with other venues. For broader liquidation data, see our liquidations page.

What we could not confirm

• The TV5Monde report itself, which returned HTTP 403. Verdict figures come from Odaily and ChainCatcher, which both cite it.
• The main defendant's fine, if any, and whether he will appeal.
• Whether individual HLG holders filed civil claims, and how those were decided.
• How much of the money spread across exchange accounts was frozen or recovered.

Quick answers

What sentence did the Holograph HLG minter get?

Five years in prison, two to be served and three suspended, from a Paris criminal court on Friday, November 6, 2026, according to Odaily and ChainCatcher citing TV5Monde.

How many HLG tokens were minted, and what were they worth?

1 billion HLG, worth about $14 million at the time. The trial heard that about 200 million were sold for more than $1 million.

Did HLG holders get compensation?

The court rejected Holograph Foundation's claim for losses from the price crash, finding no direct causal link because HLG was already falling. The reports do not mention payments to individual holders.

Can I still trade HLG on major exchanges?

Not on Gate, OKX, Binance or Bybit. Their public APIs returned delisted or unknown-symbol responses on November 8, 2026.