Crypto Scam Story From Morocco Reveals BTC Purchases Gone Wrong

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According to Morocco World News, a Frenchman was sentenced to 18 months in prison for using Bitcoin to buy a luxury car and giving a forged check to another luxury watch seller. Notably, the plaintiffs accused the defendant of having defrauded them.

As such, the Casablanca Court of Appeal decided that the 21-year-old Frenchman, Thomas Clausi, would spend 18 months in prison and compensate the victims.

In particular, the defendant had been in a penal institution since December 2021. As such, his lawyer, Mohamed Aghanaj, declared that the prison sentence was almost over. From his incarceration, the accused will only serve one month and a few days in prison.

Blocked BTC purchases were fraudulent and illegal

A few years ago, the accused bought a Ferrari car for $440,000 BTC from a French woman in Morocco. Later, the woman reported him to the authorities for fraud.

Clausi also bought three luxury watches from another man but gave him a forged check, leading the man to authorities.

In the first instance, the accused made payments with cryptography, which was not legalized in Morocco. As such, the country’s local laws considered the method illicit. In the second case, Clausi defrauded another person using a check that could not be processed due to insufficient funds.

These incident reports triggered the legal proceedings against the Frenchman, leading to his incarceration in December 2021. Now, the court ordered him to pay the owner of the watches a sum of 40,000 MAD or $4,000. It will also pay the customs authorities the sum of 3.4 million euros.

Bitcoin Plunges on the BCTUSDT l Chart on Tradingview.com

Morocco does not support crypto payments, but its adoption and use by residents continues to skyrocket. In 2022, the country’s central bank, Al-Maghrib, announced its intention to develop a regulatory framework that will guide citizens’ use of crypto.

The bank announced this at a press conference, mentioning that it has created a committee to oversee the process. However, while the bank aimed to regulate the use of crypto with its bill, the Alaouite kingdom remained negative about the move.

Other notable phrases against crypto scammers

Even though scams in the crypto industry are constantly on the rise, authorities have been relentless in getting bad actors to book.

Some popular cases in the industry have led to massive declines in many crypto and BTC projects. One is the arrest and detention of Terra founder Do Kwon.

Kwon was arrested in March by authorities in Montenegro and could be extradited to South Korea or the United States on multiple charges relating to the Terra crash and investor losses.

Gilbert Armenta, who was previously romantically involved with Ruja Ignatova, popularly known as Cryptoqueen, was sentenced to five years in prison for his involvement in the notorious OneCoin scam.

Similarly, Cooper Morgenthau, the former CFO of African Gold, was sentenced to three years in prison for embezzling $5 million from various SPACs and using that money to trade meme stocks.

– Featured image from Pixabay and graphic from Tradingview

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