MMiami Trio busted for $4M crypto bank fraud
Three Miami residents were arrested by US authorities for allegedly defrauding banks to buy millions of dollars in crypto.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan charged the three men, Esteban Cabrera Da Corte, Luis Hernandez Gonzalez and Asdrubal Ramirez Meza, with multiple offenses, including wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
The arrests were partly the result of the Department of Homeland Security’s decade-long program focused on money laundering, the El Dorado Task Force.
Trio stole identities to open accounts
The unsealed indictment revealed that the trio had opened fake accounts at an unnamed leading cryptocurrency exchange using images of fake US passports and driver’s licenses, which were then linked to their personal bank accounts.
After purchasing cryptocurrency using the fake accounts, the defendant allegedly transferred it to external cryptocurrency wallets. Once the crypto was secure, they would call the banks to say the purchases had been unauthorized, prompting the banks to refund them.
Using the insurance money, obtained through wire transfers, cashier’s checks and ATM withdrawals, the defendant would make additional crypto purchases. These ultimately amounted to more than $4 million in fraudulent chargebacks.
During the scheme, which took place in early 2020, the cryptocurrency exchange lost more than $3.5 million. According to prosecutors, they had defrauded the cryptocurrency exchange of both the cryptocurrency purchased and the funds used to purchase it.
Crypto fraudsters defrauded 2,000 investors
Earlier this month, a pair of crypto fraudsters were arrested for running a digital asset scam in which over 2,000 investors lost $1.9 million. Jeremy David McAlpine and Zachary Michael Matar, from Orange County, California, were both convicted for their role in the Dropil investment scam.
In 2017, the duo created a company in Belize under the guise of managing digital asset investment products and created DROPs, a cryptocurrency for the project. An investor spreadsheet submitted to the SEC later claimed that Dropsil had raised $54 million from 34,000 investors inside and outside the US
However, further investigation revealed that the team had realized just under $2 million from fewer than 3,000 investors, which was then used to “fund payments to themselves and their associates.”
According to the Ministry of Justice, their actions caused “economic damage to an extremely large number of victims”.
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