Katherine Nguyen, the first Australian charged with cryptocurrency theft, has pleaded guilty.
Background
On 25 October 2018, according to a report in media outlet “news.com.ua”, police in the state of New South Wales in Australia arrested a 23-year-old woman from Sydney over the alleged theft of 100,000 XRP tokens.
Apparently, detectives from the State Crime Command’s Cybercrime Squad had set up a task force back in January 2018 to investigate the reported theft of 100,000 XRP tokens from a 56-year-old man. The investigators were told by the alleged victim that he was locked out of his email account for two days in mid-January 2018, but he thinks that his email account may have gotten hacked in December 2017.
After he managed to eventually get back control of his email account, he noticed some suspicious activity involving his cryptocurrency account, and when he checked this wallet, he found that almost all of the crypto there had disappeared.
However, after an approximately ten-month investigation, on 25 October 2018, detectives used a search warrant to get access to the young woman’s home, arrested her, and took her to Ryde (a suburb of Sydney) Police station, where they charged her with “knowingly deal with proceeds of crime.”
The police were alleging that the woman (possibility with the help of others) took over the man’s email account, changed his password, thereby locking him account, and then set up two factor authentication using a mobile phone number. It is further alleged that she then accessed his crypto account, and transferred his XRP tokens to a crypto exchange in China, where this XRP was converted to Bitcoin.
Latest Development
On Friday (August 23), Australian TV news channel 7NEWS sent out the following tweet:
The first person charged over cryptocurrency fraud has pleaded guilty, swindling almost half a million dollars worth of the currency known as Ripple. Katherine Nguyen made no apology to her victim, aware she could be facing jail time when sentenced in October. @ebatten7 #7NEWS pic.twitter.com/iaU9YKgyHp
— 7NEWS Sydney (@7NewsSydney) August 23, 2019
According to their report, in January 2018, Nguyen, the alleged cryptocurrency thief, “hijacked” the email account of a 56-year old man with the same surname as her.
The report goes on to say that although Nguyen has pleaded guilty, there is “still some dispute over the exact facts,” which will hopefully be “settled at a special hearing in October” (this hearing has been given the task of preparing “a pre-sentence report”).
When she is sentenced in October, there is a real possibility that she will have to go to jail.
Featured Image Credit: Photo via Pixabay.com
