Southwark Crown Court has jailed three men over a fraud that stole more than £4M ($5.4M) in cryptocurrency from eight victims. The pitch was a phone call from someone claiming to be a police officer. The officers were fake. Anthony Ikenwe, Hamza Bashir, and Kevin Nwamma spent the money on holidays, a car, and designer clothes. One of them had declared an income of just £444 a year.
The trick worked because it borrowed the one voice most people still trust. The three men called their targets and said their cryptocurrency was at risk. They then steered each victim into handing over account details or moving funds into what sounded like a secure police account, according to the Metropolitan Police. The accounts belonged to the gang. The websites that victims were sent to looked like real police pages. The coins vanished the moment they landed, laundered through a chain of wallets and payment cards.
