Crypto scam story from Morocco reveals BTC purchases gone wrong
According to Morocco World News, a French man was jailed for 18 months for using Bitcoin to buy a luxury car and issuing a fake check to another supplier for luxury watches. Specifically, the plaintiffs accused the defendant of defrauding them.
As such, the Casablanca Court of Appeal ruled 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 correctional facility since December 2021. As such, his attorney, Mohamed Aghanaj, stated that the prison time was almost over. Counting from the imprisonment, the defendant will only serve one month and a few more days in prison.
Clausi’s BTC purchases were fraudulent and illegal
A few years back, the defendant bought a Ferrari car for $440,000 BTC from a French woman in Morocco. The woman later reported him to the authorities for fraud.
Clausi also bought three luxury watches from another man, but gave him a fake check, leading the man to the authorities.
Initially, the accused made payments with crypto, which was not legalized in Morocco. As such, local laws in the country considered the method illegal. In the second case, Clausi defrauded another person by using a check that could not be processed due to insufficient funds.
These incident reports started the trial against the Frenchman, leading to his imprisonment in December 2021. Now the court has ordered him to pay the watch’s owner a sum of 40,000 MAD or 4,000 USD. He will also pay the customs authorities the sum of 3.4 million euros.
Morocco does not support crypto payments, but its adoption and use among citizens continues to skyrocket. In 2022, the country’s central bank, Al-Maghrib, announced plans to develop a regulatory framework that will guide citizens in the use of crypto.
The bank announced it at a press conference, and mentions that it has created a committee to oversee the process. But while the bank aimed to regulate crypto use with its bill, the Alawi kingdom has been negative to the move.
Other Notable Phrases Against Crypto Scammers
Although fraud in the crypto industry is on the rise, the authorities have been relentless in bringing the 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 related to the crash of Terra and investor losses.
Gilbert Armenta, who was previously involved in a romantic relationship with Ruja Ignatova, popularly known as the “Cryptoqueen”, has been sentenced to five years in prison for his involvement in the infamous OneCoin scam.
Similarly, Cooper Morgenthau, former CFO of African Gold, has been sentenced to three years in prison for embezzling $5 million from various SPACs and using the money to trade meme stocks.
– Featured image from Pixabay and chart from Tradingview
