CZ Sentenced and SBF Settlement: April Crypto Crimes Roundup

Do Kwon continues in a tug of war between the United States and South Korea. Meanwhile, prosecutors continue to clamp down on cryptocurrency mixers.

April has been a pretty big month when it comes to crypto crimes.

Where to start than with Changpeng Zhao, who has been sentenced to four months in prison after allowing money laundering on Binance?

He will now become the richest man ever sent to prison, but critics claim there has been an “egregious miscarriage of justice” given what prosecutors had been looking for for three years.

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It is a stark contrast to the 25-year jail term handed down to doomed businessman Sam Bankman-Fried.

This month we found out that SBF agreed to help investors in FTX, the same company it bankrupted, file cases against celebrities who backed the exchange.

It's a strange turn of events, especially considering the former CEO would have had a role in hiring them in the first place.

And it could rub salt in the wound for people like NFL legend Tom Brady, who reportedly lost $30 million when the trading platform spectacularly crashed.

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Also on the list of fallen cryptocurrency heavyweights, a lot has happened with Do Kwon recently.

The Terraform Labs co-founder was on the run after the implosion of two cryptocurrencies wiped $40 billion off the market, and was arrested in Montenegro last year after trying to fly to Dubai with a fake passport.

Kwon has become embroiled in a tug-of-war between the United States and his native South Korea, both of which have filed competing extradition requests so he can face criminal charges.

But there have been all kinds of legal ping-pong that ultimately prevented a flight from taking off.

Meanwhile, a civil case against Kwon and Terraform Labs continues apace in New York, with a jury finding them guilty of fraud charges. The Securities and Exchange Commission is now asking for a whopping $5.3 billion fine.

We have also been covering a number of other arrests and convictions.

A social media influencer named Jabara Igbara, also known as “Jay Mazini,” was sentenced to seven years in prison for stealing more than $8 million from Muslims through a crypto fraud scheme.

Prosecutors described him as a “con artist” who duped unsuspecting victims by pretending to be successful on instagram and gambling away his ill-gotten gains.

The US Department of Justice also continued its relentless campaign against cryptocurrency mixers, with charges brought against Samourai Wallet founders Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill.

This all ties into fears that malicious actors are using such tools to launder funds and evade sanctions, and if convicted, Rodriguez could face 20 years behind bars.

The Samourai Wallet website has been seized and this is what it currently looks like:

Oh so many tricks

There were also some feats worth mentioning.

A trader lost over $180,000 in cryptocurrency after falling victim to a phishing attack on ethereum, with his wallet empty in just 50 minutes.

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Meanwhile, El Salvador’s state-controlled bitcoin wallet “Chivo” has suffered a second data breach, in which malicious actors leaked source code and VPN credentials for ATMs.

Earlier this month, the personal information of five million Salvadorans – a trove of 144GB of data – was also exposed online.

A 71-year-old digital artist from India fell victim to scammers pretending to be interested in his nfts.

Bad news too for an investor who lost a whopping $800,000 to two malicious Google Chrome extensions, amid fears they actually contained keyloggers. The victim, known as “Sell By Over” on x, wrote:

“This is a costly $800K mistake; the lesson is that if something seems wrong and prompts you to enter a seed, wipe the entire PC first.”

Sell ​​above x

And there has continued to be a series of attacks targeting high-profile social media accounts.

Spider-Man star Tom Holland, who has seven million followers on x, saw attackers take over his account and falsely promote “SPIDER” tokens and Spiderverse nfts.

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While the fake posts claimed that the digital assets were being launched alongside Binance, they were linked to a fraudulent website.

In a particularly strange (and unusual) development, it also appears that the hacker may have uploaded a selfie to the celebrity's account.