Manasi VarmaBitcoin worth more than GBP $2 million have been seized by the British police from a UK teen. A 17-year old British teenager was intercepted by the cybercrime unit of the police, in what they claim to be a “sophisticated cyber fraud.”
Created a Fake Site to Dupe People
Lincolnshire Police have reportedly seized BTC 48 and other crypto from the Brit, who had apparently gained access to the same by creating a copycat website of Love2Shop, a popular gift voucher site. The culprit had advertised it on Google, in order to fraud users into providing gift voucher redemption codes worth £6,500, which was then used to purchase Bitcoin, as per claims by the Lincolnshire County Court.
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Money laundering links have also been found in the case, as have 12,000 credit card numbers, along with details of as many as 197 PayPal accounts, all of which are present on the perpetrator’s PC.
Would be Doing Time if He Were an Adult
The teenager has, as of now, been charged with misrepresentation and money laundering, while being sentenced to a rehabilitation centre meant for young people. The now-17-year old was first arrested back in August 2020, after a probe into reports of personal information theft and credit card fraud, which had been coming in since April last year. A prosecutor has said that people were “duped into clicking on his website,” being fooled into thinking it was the official one.
The judge on the case has said that had he been an adult, the perpetrator would have been doing time. Lincolnshire Police’s cybercrime investigator, Detective Constable Luke Casey, has said that while in most cases, criminals think of crypto as being an easy way to “move funds around undetected,” he feels relieved that at least this time, the police succeeded in investigating the “offenses of this nature.”
Growing Crypto Crimes
This is just one of many crypto scams that are coming to light these days. With the growing cryptocurrency culture, scammers are coming up with new ways to fraud those who hold the volatile currency across different parts of the globe. In fact, according to a report in April this year, it was found that the total crypto-related crime in 2020 alone amounted to a value of a whopping $10.52 billion. Moreover, another report by Chainalysis has found that at least $815 million was sent to scam projects from countries in Eastern Europe, in the form of crypto, during the period between July 2020 and June 2021.