Two men involved in an attack on decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Platypus were acquitted by a Paris court, French news publication Le Monde reported Friday.

The duo was arrested in February over the exploit, which saw $9 million worth of crypto stolen. Later that month, Platypus recovered some of that sum and said it intended to return at least 63% of the funds to users.

The court chose not to proceed with the charges after one of the hackers – identified by Le Monde as Mohammed M – argued that he'd acted in good faith and was an "ethical hacker" taking the "endangered funds" to be returned to the protocol later. The report said he'd hoped to get a bonus of 10% of the total sum taken from the company.

The court reportedly dropped the charges of money laundering and receiving stolen funds as the criminal charges did not hold up in court. Platypus can still pursue charges against the suspects in the civil court, the court said.

CoinDesk has reached out to Platypus for comment.

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Camomile Shumba

Camomile Shumba is a CoinDesk regulatory reporter based in the UK. Previously, Shumba interned at Business Insider and Bloomberg. Camomile has featured in Harpers Bazaar, Red, the BBC, Black Ballad, Journalism.co.uk, Cryptopolitan.com and South West Londoner. Shumba studied politics, philosophy and economics as a combined degree at the University of East Anglia before doing a postgraduate degree in multimedia journalism. While she did her undergraduate degree she had an award-winning radio show on making a difference. She does not currently hold value in any digital currencies or projects.