<p>A UK Court has sentenced four fraudsters to 15 years in jail for their involvement in making a loss of £21 million to an <a href=”https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/asic-shows-how-to-spot-a-cryptocurrency-scam/” target=”_blank” rel=”follow”>Australian cryptocurrency exchange</a>. All four fraudulently obtained and laundered Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies worth tens of millions of pounds from the exchange platform.</p><p>UK Puts Four Crypto Offenders in Jail</p><p>The four perpetrators, Stephen William Boys – 58, Kelly Caton – 44, Jordan Kane Robinson – 23, and James Austin-Beddoes – 27, were associates of Blackpool-based James Parker, who was the mastermind of the fraudulent conspiracy pulled off between October 2017 and January 2018. He identified and exploited a loophole in the cryptocurrency trading platform, allowing him and his associates to siphon off £21 million. Parker died in January 2021 before criminal prosecutions against him could start.</p><p>According to the court documents, Parker fraudulently withdrew crypto assets worth £15 million from his crypto exchange account, whereas his two associates, Caton and Robinson, withdrew £2.7 million and £1.7 million, respectively. Boys was Parker’s financial advisor and worked with a UK national based in Dubai to convert the cryptocurrencies into cash and <a href=”https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/cryptocurrency-money-laundering-climbs-30-in-2021/” target=”_blank” rel=”follow”>launder them using various foreign-based online accounts.</a></p><p>Check out the iFX EXPO International 2021 session on “Future of Crypto: Between Regulatory Scrutiny and Product Evolution.”</p><p>Prosecutor Are Cracking Down on Crypto Crimes</p><p>“These offenders used the internet from the comfort of their own homes to obtain tens of millions of pounds worth of Bitcoin which did not belong to them. Cyber-enabled crime presents an increasing threat to international economic stability, as well as to honest individual investors in cryptocurrency,” said Jonathan Kelleher, a Special Prosecutor at the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service.</p><p>The prosecutors are now in the process of recovering the ill-gotten proceeds of Parker. Moreover, the official announcement highlighted that a very “significant amount” of the laundered assets have already been recovered on behalf of the Aussie exchange.</p><p>Recently, the US prosecutors pressed charges and arrested Avraham Eisenberg for draining over $110 million in digital assets from the decentralized crypto exchange, Mango Markets. Furthermore, the CFTC <a href=”https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/cftc-charges-mango-markets-manipulator-with-fraud/” target=”_blank” rel=”follow”>brought charges against Eisenberg</a>, making it the agency’s first enforcement action against a decentralized platform offender.</p>
This article was written by Arnab Shome at www.financemagnates.com.
