A court in the United Kingdom has issued sentences to a couple of crypto swindlers after finding them guilty of deceiving the likely investors by promising high profits and eventually depriving them of their hard-earned funds. Each of Michael Freckleton and Ross Jay has received a sentence of 6 years and 3 months in prison by the Southwark Crown Court.
A Couple of Crypto Scammers Get Imprisonment Sentences from a UK Court for Defrauding Unsuspecting Victims
They were discovered guilty of conspiring to deceive in association with a long-operating cryptocurrency scam. The respective scam was started back in the year 2015. The scam was based on a fictitious crypto called “Telecoin.” As included in that scam, Freckleton and Jay were the masterminds who defrauded the unsuspecting victims by selling them shares.
In this respect, the City of London police also commented. As per the officials, both the scammers proactively reached likely investors by alluring them via an attractive proposal regarding the investment in the crypto token Telecoin. They operated a company named Digi Ex for malicious purposes. In this way, they approached the likely investors through cold-calling.
In addition to this, they persuaded the victims to deposit their funds into virtual assets that did not have any existence in reality. During the period when the scam was active, between the years 2015 and 2017, a cumulative amount of nearly £509,599 was received by Digit Ex in its accounts. £409,493 out of the respective amount was detected as payments that the investors made.
As uncovered by the investigation, Freckleton and Jay benefited from the excitement concerning the escalating crypto market with the use of deceptive tricks. Subsequently, they allured innocent people and embezzled their funds to get personal gains without offering any authentic investment services. In the initial days of the scam, the crypto market was going through a boom.
Additionally, the hype regarding this sector was very intense so much so that the enthusiastic investors took their funds and invested into the Telecoin scam without doing comprehensive research on the project. As per the reports, the scammers did not use the funds, equaling $635,000, to trade tokens. Instead of this, they utilized the respective funds to pay the huge salaries the Digi EX’s employees. They kept the remaining funds for themselves.
Cumulatively, the scammers remained effective in collecting up to £139,000. All of those funds were given by unsuspecting investors. Apart from that, the scammers extracted an additional huge cash of £145,000 from the business account of Digi Ex to increase their illegal profits. This investigation brought to the front the scammers’ disregard for honest practices and their victims’ financial well-being.
According to the interpretation of the case made by the London police, the scammers leveraged the rise of the crypto market and defrauded their victims to misappropriate the funds given by them. Moreover, fraudsters also utilize crypto ATMs within the jurisdiction of the country to take away money from the people.
Widespread Crypto ATMs in the Country Also Contribute to the Increasing Crypto Fraud
In recent years, digital assets have become considerably popular. Keeping that in view, several individuals entered this sector without thinking about the potential complexities and risks associated with it. Furthermore, the crypto ATMs’ widespread availability has provided great convenience to the people who invest without comprehensive knowledge about this technology. Such an atmosphere could promote fraudulent operations and scams.