prison

According to The Block, the High Court of Scotland sentenced Robert Barr to eight years in prison for remotely orchestrating a theft of approximately £2 million (about $2.7 million) in cryptocurrency while serving his sentence in Edinburgh prison. Two accomplices, Iain Doyle and Sean Favier, received sentences of five years and four years, respectively; all three had previously pleaded guilty to involvement in organized serious crime.The court revealed the method of operation: Barr had his accomplices enter the victim's home and asked the homeowner to download the remote control software AnyDesk, which he then used from prison to control the couple's computer, inputting a receiving address he controlled to transfer funds from the victim's wallet. On the evening of April 17, 2024, around 11:30 PM, Favier and Doyle arrived at the couple's residence but were captured on the doorbell camera; the homeowner refused to open the door, and the two were unable to enter, resulting in a failed plan.Judge Lord Cubie described this as "a crime that combines 21st-century computer technology with old-fashioned burglary." On June 25, 2024, police seized Barr's mobile phone and discovered detailed messages directing his two accomplices; the judge noted that Barr had previously served 21 months for cryptocurrency-related fraud but organized crime again while in prison, which constituted "significant aggravating circumstances." If convicted at trial, he should have received a sentence of eight years and ten months. Barr is scheduled to attend a serious crime prevention order hearing on November 17.

The Scottish High Court sentenced 29-year-old Robert Barr to 8 years in prison for allegedly planning to steal cryptocurrency while in prison, with the amount involved reaching up to £2 million (approximately $2.7 million). Co-defendants Sean Favier (26) and Iain Doyle (37) both admitted to participating in serious organized crime, receiving sentences of 4 years and 5 years, respectively. Judge Lord Cubie stated that this case combines 21st-century computer technology with old-fashioned burglary.According to court disclosures, Barr's plan was to have Favier and Doyle enter a residence near Midlothian, Edinburgh, and force the victim to install remote control software AnyDesk on their computer, allowing Barr, who was serving a 21-month fraud sentence at HMP Edinburgh at the time, to remotely control the computer and transfer cryptocurrency into a wallet under his control. Around 11:30 PM on April 17, 2024, the two arrived at the residence, but the homeowner couple discovered them through the doorbell camera and refused to open the door, causing the plan to fail.Investigators recovered months of preparations from Barr's phone, which was seized in June 2024, including identifying the victim, collecting photos of the house, and conducting reconnaissance. The phone messages explicitly mentioned threats or violence. The victim is a co-founder of a cryptocurrency startup, whose accomplices had previously stolen a cryptocurrency wallet in January 2024 but were unable to access the funds due to a lack of a PIN code. Prosecutors described Barr as a "seasoned cybercriminal." The judge will consider issuing a serious crime prevention order against him on November 17, and Barr is currently detained due to potential extradition matters. According to a report by Chainalysis, the amount stolen in such "ransom attacks" exceeded $30 million in the first half of 2026.

According to CNN, a San Francisco court sentenced tech consultant Nima Momeni to 16 years to life in prison on Tuesday after being convicted of stabbing to death Cash App founder Bob Lee. In December 2024, the jury found him guilty of second-degree murder, rejecting the claim of self-defense.Momeni has been held since his arrest following the incident in 2023, and the judge denied his request for a retrial before sentencing; his lawyer plans to appeal. Prosecutors stated that Momeni was angry because Lee introduced his sister to a drug dealer and stabbed Lee three times with a knife, one of which pierced the heart. Lee subsequently died in the hospital at the age of 43. Lee had founded Cash App and was serving as the Chief Product Officer of cryptocurrency company MobileCoin at the time of his death. Bob Lee was fatally stabbed in San Francisco in April 2023.

According to a Dutch prosecution announcement, the prosecution is seeking a 6-month prison sentence for a former investigator of the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee (KMar), accusing him of illegally accessing police systems using his official authority to steal cryptocurrency worth over 6,000 euros from a traveler.

On Friday, the Paris Criminal Court sentenced a Ukrainian man to 5 years in prison, including 2 years of actual imprisonment and 3 years of probation. The man was accused of illegally generating and stealing 1 billion Holograph (HLG) tokens, valued at approximately 14 million dollars at the time of the incident, by exploiting a security loophole in the company he previously worked for between May and August 2024.The court found that the man illegally issued 1 billion HLG tokens by tampering with the token generation conditions on the platform and transferred the tokens to a personal wallet. He then, along with two accomplices, dispersed the funds to multiple cryptocurrency exchange platform accounts. His two accomplices were sentenced to 2 years in prison (with 14 months probation) and fined 80,000 euros, as well as 2 years of probationary imprisonment and fined 40,000 euros.In addition, the court rejected the Holograph Foundation's request for compensation for the losses due to the token price crash, stating that the price of HLG had already fluctuated and dropped significantly before the incident, making it impossible to establish a direct causal relationship between the subsequent depreciation and the fraudulent act. After the incident, the price of HLG fell from nearly 0.03 dollars in May 2024 to 0.001 dollars by the end of December of the same year.

According to CBC, a federal judge in Miami, USA, sentenced 20-year-old Canadian man Trenton Johnston to 25 months in prison. Previously, he admitted to participating in a money laundering conspiracy and surrendered approximately 3.8 million dollars worth of stolen cryptocurrency.Johnston began his crimes in January 2024, impersonating Google technical support and representatives from cryptocurrency companies to trick victims into providing wallet access codes. In one case, he and an accomplice defrauded a victim in California of 185 bitcoins (worth about 13 million dollars at the time). He then used the stolen funds to purchase luxury items such as a Lamborghini Aventador SVJ, two BMWs, jewelry, and private jet rentals. Johnston has agreed to be deported back to Canada and is still facing drug possession charges in Florida.

According to The Block, a man in Missouri, USA, has pleaded guilty to participating in a robbery and kidnapping scheme aimed at stealing Bitcoin.Prosecutors stated that the man and his associates had tracked the target and his parents, planning to carry out the crime, but the man fled the scene before the plan was executed due to concerns about being captured by security cameras. The man could face up to 20 years in prison.

According to Bitcoin.com News, Timothy Wadsworth, a man from Rochester, New York, was sentenced to 51 months in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering, and was ordered to pay approximately $810,000 in restitution.The U.S. Department of Justice stated that between March and May 2020, Wadsworth initiated 310 unauthorized payments totaling approximately $1.6736 million using account information provided by accomplices through the payment service provider Stripe, of which 116 transactions were successful, amounting to approximately $730,700. He then transferred some of the funds to bank accounts under his control and purchased Bitcoin through Coinbase, which he then transferred to his accomplices.

According to the news released by the Avon and Somerset Police, Terroll Paul (31 years old), Mohamed Samagassi (37 years old), and Pierre Madzou (30 years old) broke into a man's residence in Bristol in the early hours of May 15, assaulted the victim, and demanded a large amount of cryptocurrency, but were unsuccessful.On October 15, the three were sentenced at Bristol Crown Court for aggravated burglary, with Paul receiving a 6-year sentence, Madzou receiving 5 and a half years, and Samagassi receiving 5 years. The victim suffered severe head injuries and required hospitalization, while his underage sister successfully called the police. The three suspects were subsequently arrested at the scene and pleaded guilty during their court appearance in August.

According to the City of London Police report, 25-year-old London man Ajay Shinjin (also known as AJ Marley Cruz) was sentenced to two and a half years in prison by the Inner London Crown Court for his involvement in a SIM swap fraud case. He pleaded guilty on September 28 to two charges of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation and transferring criminal property. The case involved the theft of cryptocurrency worth nearly £200,000 (approximately $265,000).In early November 2021, British telecom operator BT discovered unauthorized activity in its systems, where customers' phone numbers were transferred to SIM cards controlled by criminals, who intercepted one-time verification codes sent by banks and cryptocurrency platforms. The police identified several suspects based on device data provided by BT, and Shinjin was linked to four of the devices. He profited over £44,000, which he used for a vacation in Dubai, a luxury apartment in Canary Wharf, and a gold-plated dental grill.Details of the case revealed that one victim lost approximately £40,000 in cryptocurrency on November 2, 2021, with about £27,000 flowing into Shinjin's personal crypto account; a second victim had approximately £17,000 entirely transferred to his wallet; he also assisted in stealing about £8,000 from a third victim's Coinbase account and around £130,000 from a fourth victim. Shinjin was first arrested at his residence in 2021 and was re-arrested at Heathrow Airport upon returning from Dubai in October 2023.

According to Bloomberg, cybersecurity consultant Jonathan Spalletta was found guilty by a New York jury for stealing nearly $55 million from the cryptocurrency trading platform Uranium Finance. Prosecutors accused him of carrying out two attacks in 2021, after which the platform was shut down due to the theft of funds. The jury reached a verdict after more than two hours of deliberation. Spalletta faces up to 20 years in prison for money laundering charges related to the use of cryptocurrency mixing services like Tornado Cash.U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff has set the sentencing date for February 16. Law enforcement seized over $3 million worth of rare Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering cards from his residence in Maryland, along with approximately $31 million in cryptocurrency assets. Prosecutors stated that he also spent over $600,000 to purchase a commemorative ancient Roman coin marking the assassination of Caesar and bought a piece of the Wright brothers' original aircraft that was taken to the moon by Armstrong for $137,000. The defense attorney argued that he was merely using publicly available functions within smart contracts, rather than forging credentials or using malicious code, and therefore did not constitute hacking.

A former core infrastructure engineer, Daniel Rhyne, from an industrial company in New Jersey, was sentenced to 32 months in prison for attacking his employer's computer network and demanding a ransom in Bitcoin. The 59-year-old Rhyne, who is from Kansas City, Missouri, was sentenced on September 28 by U.S. District Judge Michael A. Shipp in Trenton. He pleaded guilty in April this year to charges including extortion by threatening to damage a protected computer and intentionally damaging a protected computer. The prosecution did not disclose the name of the company, which is headquartered in Somerset County, New Jersey, serving clients in industries ranging from biopharmaceuticals to oil and gas.According to the FBI's criminal complaint, around 4 PM on November 25, 2023, the company's network administrator began receiving hundreds of password reset notifications for accounts, and subsequently discovered that all other domain administrator accounts had been deleted. Forty-four minutes later, employees received an email titled "Your Network Has Been Penetrated," claiming that the company's IT administrator had been locked out, backups had been deleted, and warning that unless 20 Bitcoins (approximately $750,000 at the time) were paid by December 2, an additional 40 servers would be shut down daily for 10 days. The ransom was set at 700,000 euros, to be paid in Bitcoin.Investigators traced the attack back to an unauthorized virtual machine created on the company network on November 9, 2023, with the password "TheFr0zenCrew!", which was subsequently set for the administrator account, 301 user accounts, and the email used to send the ransom note.

According to a report by The New York Times, Binance founder Zhao Changpeng stated in a recent interview that he was assigned to the low-security prison Lompoc II in California, which had also previously housed FTX founder SBF.Before reporting to prison, Zhao Changpeng assembled a team of advisors who taught him the various subtle rules of prison cell block politics. One of the advisors even communicated with other inmates, who agreed to help Zhao Changpeng adapt to life in prison.In August 2024, Zhao Changpeng left Lompoc prison and moved to a halfway house. However, due to issues with his immigration status, he had to spend the last two weeks in a local jail, passing the time doing push-ups and sit-ups in his cell. On the day of his release, it took only 26 minutes from Zhao Changpeng being released from custody to his private jet taking off.

According to the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office, 23-year-old Brooklyn man Ronald Spektor was sentenced to 4 to 12 years in prison for committing phishing and social engineering fraud. Over approximately one year, Spektor impersonated Coinbase customer service, luring about 100 American users to transfer cryptocurrency to wallets under his control, claiming "accounts were hacked and assets were at risk," stealing nearly 15.94 million dollars in total.Subsequently, he laundered the money through multiple exchanges, mixing services, and cryptocurrency gambling platforms. On September 2, he pleaded guilty to all 31 charges, including first-degree money laundering and first-degree grand larceny, and was ordered to forfeit cash, cryptocurrency, and personal property valued at over 500,000 dollars, while also needing to pay restitution of nearly 16 million dollars. Investigations revealed that he had publicly flaunted his criminal gains on platforms like Telegram.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced that Iris Rabaya Au, a 37-year-old woman from Irvine, Orange County, California, was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for failing to report over $2.6 million in illegal income to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). She was also ordered to pay $1.484 million in restitution and had multiple luxury cars, high-performance vehicles, designer handbags, and three "Godfather" sculptures confiscated. Au is the ex-girlfriend of cryptocurrency scammer Adam Iza.Prosecutors stated that between 2020 and 2024, Iza fraudulently obtained Meta advertising accounts and credit lines, selling account access and earning millions of dollars in unreported income. At Iza's direction, Au set up shell companies and opened bank accounts, using the related funds to pay approximately $1 million to Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD) officers and to purchase or lease luxury homes, cars, jewelry, and clothing. They also spent nearly $10 million on entertainment and purchased about $16 million in cryptocurrency for Iza. Between 2020 and 2023, Au transferred over $2.6 million into her personal bank accounts but did not accurately report it on her federal tax returns. She pleaded guilty to one count of false tax return in March 2025. Iza pleaded guilty in January 2025 to charges including conspiracy to infringe rights, wire fraud, and tax evasion, with a sentencing hearing scheduled for October 5. He was also sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for his involvement in an attempted Bitcoin robbery and kidnapping case in Connecticut in August 2024.

A former bank executive was recently sentenced for forging documents to fraudulently obtain over 1.6 billion Hong Kong dollars in illegal loans, and using the funds to purchase Bitcoin and conduct cryptocurrency bribery.

According to the United Morning News, seven Malaysian gangsters targeted players attending a poker game, breaking into a luxury private residence in Bukit Timah late at night, armed and stealing over 4.9 million dollars, quickly splitting into two groups to escape Singapore. Six of them pleaded guilty in the High Court on Monday (September 14), with the two masterminds sentenced to 12 years and 11 months in prison, 24 strokes of the cane, plus a fine of 4,000 dollars.In court, it was revealed that the masterminds, Wu Wentong (30 years old) and Huang Zhishan (35 years old), learned from a friend who had previously attended the poker game that the house often held poker games at night. After scouting the location, they discovered that the front door of the house would not be locked during the game. Wu Wentong and Huang Zhishan then recruited five other accomplices, specifically coming to Singapore to commit the crime. This armed robbery occurred around 2 a.m. on April 18, 2024, at a residence in the upscale Alper Wang Garden area, where 11 men and women were playing poker in the living room.According to the case details, around March 2024, Wu Wentong and Huang Zhishan decided to rob the poker players at the house due to financial issues. They knew that they could not carry out such a large-scale robbery with just the two of them, so they contacted Hamidun, who runs a private security company and provides debt collection services, to help gather a team, promising a reward of 1.5 million ringgit (approximately 470,000 Singapore dollars). After the group succeeded, they left in a multi-purpose vehicle, splitting into two groups to leave Singapore via the Tuas and Woodlands checkpoints. At the same time, several players in the private residence managed to free themselves from their restraints and reported the robbery to the police. With the assistance of the Royal Malaysia Police, the six defendants were arrested between late April and November 2024 and were extradited to Singapore for prosecution. The police have since recovered virtual currency worth 1.69 million dollars, while the remaining funds and property are still missing.

According to The Block, Las Vegas businessman Brent Kovar was convicted by a jury for his involvement in a $24 million cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme and faces a maximum of 280 years in prison.The U.S. Department of Justice stated that Kovar used investor funds to operate Profit Connect and repaid old investors with new funds under the guise of mining profits.