A British court has sentenced four men to each serve 15 years in prison for fraudulently obtaining and laundering Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies worth $26 million U.S.
Stephen William Boys, Kelly Caton, Jordan Kane Robinson, and James Austin-Beddoes were each found guilty of fraud for stealing digital assets from an Australian cryptocurrency exchange.
All four men worked with James Parker, who “masterminded the conspiracy from his home in Blackpool (England) over a three-month period between October 2017 and January 2018,” the court said in a written statement.
Parker and the other four men had exploited a loophole on the Australian trading platform which enabled them to steal the funds.
James Parker died of natural causes in January 2021 before he could be tried for the cryptocurrency theft.
British law enforcement has said that cryptocurrency fraud increased by a third to total nearly $270 million U.S. over the past few years. Police now have cryptocurrency experts stationed across England to help combat rising instances of fraud and theft.
