A Priest, A Software Engineer and Bitcoins = 20 Years
Posted by: Timothy Weaver on 03/18/2017 11:25 AM
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What happens when you combine a software engineer, a priest and bitcoins? You get 20 years in prison.
Pastor Trevon Gross and Florida coder Yuri Lebedev were involved in a scheme to launder bitcoins. They were found guilty of bribery, wire fraud, bank fraud, and fraud conspiracy. They were laundering bitcoins from dark net drug deals and ransomware scams.
Lebedev, his associate Anthony Murgio, his father Michael Murgio and other partners ran Coin.mx which was an illegal bitcoin exchange. They approached Gross who had founded Helping Other People Excel Federal Credit Union and gave him $150,000. In turn, he appointed Lebedev and Murgio junior seats on the board of directors. They then funneled millions of dollars of transactions through the institution.
Financial investigators caught wind of the scam and the FBI moved in.
There was one more involved in the Coin.mx scam - Gery Shalon, an Israeli national. He used the leaked data from the 2014 JP Morgan hack, in which 76 million households' and 7 million small businesses' records were stolen.
Using the dumped data, Shalon operated a pump-and-dump scam in which penny stocks were hyped in emails and once the price has risen, the scam operator dumps their stock and leaves investors with worthless shares.
Shalon was extradited to the U.S. and faces 23 charges related to the scam and Coin.mx.
Source: The Register
Pastor Trevon Gross and Florida coder Yuri Lebedev were involved in a scheme to launder bitcoins. They were found guilty of bribery, wire fraud, bank fraud, and fraud conspiracy. They were laundering bitcoins from dark net drug deals and ransomware scams.Lebedev, his associate Anthony Murgio, his father Michael Murgio and other partners ran Coin.mx which was an illegal bitcoin exchange. They approached Gross who had founded Helping Other People Excel Federal Credit Union and gave him $150,000. In turn, he appointed Lebedev and Murgio junior seats on the board of directors. They then funneled millions of dollars of transactions through the institution.
Financial investigators caught wind of the scam and the FBI moved in.
There was one more involved in the Coin.mx scam - Gery Shalon, an Israeli national. He used the leaked data from the 2014 JP Morgan hack, in which 76 million households' and 7 million small businesses' records were stolen.
Using the dumped data, Shalon operated a pump-and-dump scam in which penny stocks were hyped in emails and once the price has risen, the scam operator dumps their stock and leaves investors with worthless shares.
Shalon was extradited to the U.S. and faces 23 charges related to the scam and Coin.mx.
Source: The Register
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