Daily Fraud Update: 20th March

Chris Lee

Responses pour in over alleged Canfield fraud

FRAUD ALERT graphic art on a laptop screen

The crypto social media community has been reacting with horror and disbelief over the news that Jacob Canfield, who was a leading trading analyst, has been accused of crypto fraud.

Canfield stands accused of having manipulated a range of public output, including trading signals.

In particular he is accused of having used Photoshop to help create supposedly fake images.

Canfield, who was formerly the leading analyst at TradingView, has now closed down his Twitter account.

One person, on Twitter under the handle “HsakaTrades”, outlined what happened when he pushed Canfield.

“Man spoke about manually arbing a $17 Mex-CB spread. Said it was a glitch”, the user explained.

“Then when I probed, deleted his tweets”, he added.

Another user, called “mickmugsi123”, also shared their views on the Canfield allegations.

“I deleted him and gave him my 2 cents about lying about shit. Thought he was legit. Guess he’s really a fake”, they said.

Canadian citizens sent to jail over Bitcoin scam

Canadian Flag on mast

Two men who were accused of having committed money laundering and wire fraud conspiracy have been found guilty and sent to prison.

Karanjit Singh Khatkar and Jagroop Singh Khatkar, who are both Canadian citizens, were each sentenced to 24 months in US federal prison over the claims.

The pair carried out a Bitcoin scam which saw them pose as customer service representatives of a legitimate Bitcoin firm called HitBTC.

They did this on the social networking site Twitter, under the username “HITBTCAssist”.

However, they later went on to steal just over 23 Bitcoins from those who fell victim to the fraud.

They divided up the Bitcoins and sold them and indulged in various high-end purchases including cars and experiences at casinos in Las Vegas.

One of the two, Karanjit, was later arrested at a major US airport, while the other – Jagroop – showed up at law enforcement voluntarily.

However, when they were hauled in front of the courts in the US, they decided to plead guilty.

They were faced with charges both of money laundering and also of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

They were told by the court that they would need to pay a significant amount of restitution as part of their settlement.

Overall, they will have to pay a total of $184,500.

An outline of the verdict published on the site MoreLaw went into more detail about the way in which one victim in particular, from the US state of Oregon, was targeted.

“Using the fraudulent Twitter account, the defendants responded to the Oregon victim’s questions about withdrawing virtual currency from her HitBTC account”, it said.

“The defendants convinced the victim to send information they could use to log on and take over her email, HitBTC and Kraken accounts. Kraken is a U.S.-based online platform that offers services similar to HitBTC”, it added.


Chris Lee

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