{"id":20278,"date":"2021-10-27T01:28:11","date_gmt":"2021-10-27T05:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=20278"},"modified":"2021-10-27T01:28:11","modified_gmt":"2021-10-27T05:28:11","slug":"lincolnshire-boy-has-2m-of-cryptocurrency-seized-by-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2021\/10\/27\/lincolnshire-boy-has-2m-of-cryptocurrency-seized-by-police\/","title":{"rendered":"Lincolnshire boy has \u00a32m of cryptocurrency seized by police"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A boy who set up a fake website as part of a “sophisticated cyber fraud” has had more than \u00a32m of cryptocurrency seized by police.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The 17-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, used it to dupe users of a digital gift voucher site into entering their personal details.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He stole \u00a36,500 worth of vouchers and used the proceeds to buy Bitcoins, Lincoln Crown Court heard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The teenager was handed a 12-month rehabilitation order.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Sam Skinner, prosecuting, said the boy had set up the fake website from his bedroom in April 2020.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It was almost identical to the official site of Love2Shop, which sells gift vouchers, the court heard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He then paid to advertise on Google, which resulted in the bogus site appearing above the genuine site when people searched for it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“People were duped into clicking on his website thinking they were accessing the official site,” the prosecutor said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The court was told the boy took the site down after a week just as Love2Shop began investigating him following a complaint from a customer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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However, the teenager, from south Lincolnshire, used the proceeds to buy Bitcoins and other cryptocurrency, which subsequently soared in value, the court was told.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Following his arrest in August 2020, police found 48 Bitcoins and a smaller number of other coins.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“At the time they were worth \u00a3200,000. They are now worth a little over \u00a32 million,” Mr Skinner said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The subsequent police investigation also found over 12,000 credit card numbers stored on the boy’s computer and details of 197 PayPal accounts, he told the court.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The teenager, who is now studying A-levels, admitted charges of money laundering between 9 and 16 April 2020 and fraud totalling \u00a36,539 by false representation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Judge Catarina Sjolin Knight ruled that he benefited from his crimes by \u00a32,141,720 and ordered that amount to be confiscated from his assets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“If he was an adult he would be going inside,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She told the defendant: “You have a long-standing interest in computers. Unfortunately, you used your skills to commit a sophisticated fraud.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A Bitcoin is basically a computer file which is stored in a digital wallet app on a smartphone or computer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It could be described as an online version of cash, which you can use to buy products and services, but it is not controlled by the government or banks.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A boy who set up a fake website as part of a “sophisticated cyber fraud” has had more than \u00a32m of cryptocurrency seized by police. The 17-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, used […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[4510,4686,4835,8141],"class_list":{"0":"post-20278","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-uk","9":"tag-bitcoin","10":"tag-cryptocurrency","11":"tag-cyber-crime","12":"tag-lincoln-crown-court","13":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20278"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20280,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20278\/revisions\/20280"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}