• A Ph.D. student of Oxford was recently sentenced to four and a half years in prison for a 2 million euro crypto scam.
• The 36-year-old student, Wybo Wiersma, created a website named iotaseed.io which supposedly generated private keys (seeds) for IOTA cryptocurrency users, but it was all a scam.
• Bitfinex identified the malicious activity on their exchange and froze Wiersma’s accounts after he presented two fake passports which they were unable to identify.
Crypto Scam Leads To Prison Sentence
The British Royal Court recently sentenced a Ph.D. student of Oxford to four and half years in prison for a 2 million euro crypto scam on January 27th. The 36-year-old student from the Netherlands, Wybo Wiersma, used a false name to set up the website iotaseed.io when he was studying at St Cross College which supposedly generated private keys (seeds) allowing users to trade IOTA cryptocurrency tokens.
Malicious Codes Used To Access Private Accounts
Wiersma tricked users into believing that his website could generate random 81 characters passwords (seeds) which granted them access to IOTA tokens, however in reality he had written malicious codes onto the website that allowed him to access each user’s “seed” when they carried out transactions and hijack funds into his own personal account. He then converted the stolen funds into Bitcoin and Monero altcoin tokens on Bitfinex exchange platform during 19th January 2018 worth 11 million dollars initially but part of this money was recovered by the IOTA foundation and affected exchanges after freezing his accounts on suspicion of fraud activity taking place within them .
Bitfinex Freezes Accounts On Suspicion Of Fraudulent Activity
Upon being suspicious of fraudulent activity involving Wiersma’s accounts, Bitfinex demanded that he identify himself before unfreezing these accounts so he gave them photographs of two fake passports – one from Belgium with incorrect information about its country stated in the document and other photo showed Jason holding an Australian passport – however due to not being able to identify who owned these accounts they remained frozen leading Wiersma onto making multiple attempts at trying to withdraw his money back out again without success due to authorities being alerted already about his actions before this could be done or completed successfully by him .
Victims Of Crypto Scam Have Been Compensated
The victims affected by this crypto scam have been compensated fully through collective efforts made by both exchanges as well as IOTA Foundation despite their losses originally caused by fraudulent activities set up against them via this false platform created by Wiersma widely known as “IOTASEED” . Furthermore , British Royal Court has ruled out sentence toward Wybo Wiersma for carrying out such an illegal activity without proper authorization or permission needed beforehand .
Conclusion
Crime involving cryptocurrencies is becoming increasingly more common and law enforcement agencies are stepping up their efforts in order crack down on those responsible for such scams or frauds committed against innocent people involved with digital currencies either directly or indirectly through investing activities carried out while trading online amongst different platforms available at present time within market today !
