Crime cases can happen anytime and anywhere. No exception in cyberspace, including in the world of cryptocurrency which is being loved. Here are four crypto crimes that cost billions of losses.
Mt.Gox
Mt.Gox, a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange was closed without prior notice in 2014. There were about 850 thousand BTC belonging to the missing user there, although soon 250 thousand of them were found in old digital wallets. When that happened, Bitcoin was valued at US $ 500 per coin.
Due to this incident, Mark Karpeles, who was then CEO, was accused of embezzlement. Eventually he was found not guilty of the case, although he was found guilty of tampering with records and spent 2.5 years in prison.
The Zdnet website report said Coinlab, which handled the Mt.Gox bankruptcy, gave hope to the victims. They can recover some of the funds that have been lost before, rather than waiting for the current court process.
Bitstamp
Hacker managed to break into the hot wallet on Bitstamp. This makes the Bitstamp site closed and all customers are asked not to deposit into the wallet.
Due to this incident, the loss reached 19 thousand Bitcoin or around $5 million in 2015.
Thodex
This was a stirring case last week, after his boss, Faruk Fatih Ozer, disappeared and was reportedly in Thailand. He also brought US $ 2 billion in digital assets.
Last Thursday (22/4/2021), Faruk released a statement if he would close his platform. However, since Wednesday, trading has stopped and users have been unable to access digital assets.
The user filed a criminal complaint against Thodex. Meanwhile, lawyer Abdullah Usame Ceran, filed a criminal complaint against Faruk, also ordered the authorities to seize platform assets including bank accounts, shares and ownership.
MTI
last August 2020, CoinDesk asked all Mirror Trading International (MTI) users to withdraw their money as much as possible. This is based on a Texas regulator’s decision to label the company a fraud and pending investigation by South Africa’s Financial Services Conduct Authority (FSCA).
Then in December 2020, FSCA discovered MTI was making a statement of trading, not declaring a loss and committing no fraud to defraud the market. Launching Business Tech, besides that it was found that the company has more than 16 thousand Bitcoins belonging to users.
The MTI scheme makes as passive income. According to the site, users only made a deposit of US $ 100 worth of Bitcoin and were promised to supplement it with foreign exchange trading software based on AI.
Source: CNBC
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