Crypto Exchange Impersonators Face 2 Years in Prison for Bitcoin Fraud!
Two men from Canada have been caught for impersonating a crypto exchange, and now face up to 2 years in prison for Bitcoin fraud. The accused men have supposedly defrauded a Bitcoin (BTC) investor out of $140,000. The manner they conducted this fraud was by impersonating the cryptocurrency exchange HitBTC.
According to court records on December 16th, the brothers Karanjit Singh Khatkhar and Jagroop Singh Khatkar pled guilty to the charges against them. The men were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud through a Bitcoin scam they carried out via Twitter during July of 2018.
Impersonating Crypto Exchange Support
Documents were filed this July which brought the Bitcoin fraud case to light. The court case is currently being trialed by the United States District Court in Portland, Oregon.
The pair of convicted brothers were posing as a support service for crypto exchange HitBTC on Twitter in order to commit Bitcoin fraud. Through this method, the brothers convinced an unnamed 63-year-old user of the HitBTC exchange, to reveal the email address attached to her trading account. They then proceeded to hack into her account, stealing a total of 23 Bitcoins through this fraud (worth around $140,000 at the time of the events).
The documents state that Singh Khatkhars “did unlawfully, knowingly, and intentionally transfer, possess, and use, without lawful authority, a means of identification of another, knowing that the means of identification belonged to a real person.”
The victim took pity on the defendants at a plea hearing on Monday, once learning she would likely win the court case. Thus entitling her to regain possession of the lost funds. She reportedly said in court: “I feel sorry for them. I have a son that’s 27. I hope they can turn their smarts into something more beneficial,”.
The Singh Khatkhars will return for sentencing next March.
Online cryptocurrency and Bitcoin scams continue to surface
This Bitcoin fraud case highlights the continuing trend of bad actors cashing in on cryptocurrency’s increasing mainstream appeal.
Over the past few months alone, hundreds of new instances arose of crime associated with the theft of assets through forex, binary options, CFD trading and other forms of online fraud. Many of which exceed the Singh Khatkhars’ $140,000 theft.
Just this December, the New Jersey police department arrested three men associated with an alleged cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme. Which managed to collectively take a tremendous $722 million from thousands of individuals worldwide.
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