- A 21-year young youngster scammed an old lady for a luxury car.
- The guilty must serve an 18-month jail term for running a cryptocurrency fraud.
Recently,BTC scammers have used ingenuity to steal substantial amounts from investors. Thankfully, law enforcement organizations have detained and jailed some of them.
The Moroccan BTC Scam
A Frenchman received 18 months in prison, according to Morocco World News, for using Bitcoin to purchase a Ferrari and presenting a fake check to a different merchant in order to purchase high-end watches. In particular, the plaintiffs claimed that the defendant had conned them.
It should be noted that the defendant has been incarcerated since December 2021. Therefore, according to Mohamed Aghanaj, his attorney, the sentence was nearly up. The defendant will only spend one month and a few more days in jail after his arrest.
The defendant had paid a French lady in Morocco $440,000 BTC for a Ferrari automobile. The lady then denounced him for fraud to the police.
Clausi also purchased three expensive watches from another individual, but instead of paying with cash, he paid using a fake check, which got him into trouble.
The Penalty Administered Against the Scammer
In the first case, the defendant paid using cryptocurrency, which was not accepted in Morocco. As a result, the approach was prohibited by national legislation. In the second instance, Clausi stole money from another individual by using a cheque that was returned for insufficient amounts.
The Casablanca Court of Appeals decided that Thomas Clausi must serve an 18-month jail term for running a BTC fraud.
These event reports served as the catalyst for the Frenchman’s legal actions, which resulted in his imprisonment in December 2021. Now, the court has mandated that he pay MAD40,000 ($4,000) to the owner of the watch. He will also make a payment of €3.4 million to the customs officials.
The area has seen a rise in the popularity of cryptocurrencies despite the politicians in Morocco’s unfriendly attitude. Al-Maghrib, the nation’s central bank, has previously expressed plans to create an appropriate regulatory framework for the asset class in order to provide consumers with the highest level of security.
Similar Crypto Scammers Sentenced in the Past
Gilbert Armenta, Ruja Ignatova’s former lover, was given a five-year jail term by the Southern District of New York (SDNY) Courthouse for laundering $300 million that had been stolen from OneCoin investors. Armenta, according to the prosecution, used some of the money to buy a jet aircraft and gambled the rest.
The former head of African Gold, Cooper Morgenthau, will also visit the jail cell from inside. He allegedly siphoned off more than $5 million from three SPACs and used the funds to trade “meme stocks”‘ stocks, options, cryptocurrency,and BTC.
Do Kwon, a co-founder of Terraform Labs, and Sam Bankman-Fried, a former CEO of FTX, should be included when discussing cryptocurrency fraudsters who may get prison time.
Both guys staged multi-billion dollar cryptocurrency scams, according to several unsuccessful investors and agencies, and they deserve to go to jail. Kwon was reportedly on the run for many months before being captured by Montenegrin officials in March.
After a short stint in a Bahamian prison, Bankman-Fried is now living with his parents in California. If he was involved in the massive FTX breakdown, it would be determined during his trial at the beginning of October.