In Brief:
- Lincolnshire Police’s Cyber Crime Unit seized more than £2m worth of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
- In South Lincolnshire, a 17-year-old was arrested with charges of fraud by false representation and money laundering.
- It is worth noticing that this is one of the first and the largest seizures in the county.
In what could be termed as one of the largest anti money laundering investigations, more than £2m worth of bitcoin and other cryptocurrency has been seized by Lincolnshire Police’s Cyber Crime Unit.
As per the reports, A 17-year-old from the south of the county, whose name has been redacted for legal reasons, was charged with fraud by false representation and money laundering in connection with the Cyber unit’s investigation.
The accused appeared at Lincoln Crown Court on 26th October and was then sentenced to a youth rehabilitation order.
Following additional investigations into intelligence reports received from Action Fraud and Crimestoppers, the teenager was arrested on August 14, 2020. Besides this, Intelligence also suggested that the suspect was involved in credit card fraud and was stealing personal information to defraud a digital gift voucher company out of around £6,000.
Subsequently, detectives got hold of links to money laundering through cryptocurrency, which prompted further probes and this led to the seizure of more than 48 Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
On this operation, Detective Constable Luke Casey, the Cyber Crime Investigator commented, “This was a sophisticated cyber fraud and a complex investigation which involved our Cyber Crime Unit working collaboratively with a number of external agencies and other internal departments.”
Luke Casey also informed that “reports made to Action Fraud and Crimestoppers are taken seriously and are passed onto the police to review and investigate.”
Recently, instances of crypto-fraud have been on rise in all the corners of the crypto-world. To counter this, a group of Bitcoin ATM operators had recently announced the formation of the Cryptocurrency Compliance Cooperative(CCC).
