US prosecutor has charged two foreign nationalists of Nigeria namely Onwuemerie Ogor Gift and Kelvin Usifoh for conducting fraud bitcoin investment scheme. The two Nigerian will be facing wire fraud and money laundering charges.
The news was revealed on Wednesday by the District Attorney’s office of Oregon. Two people who were targeted against the fraud are from Oregon and California. The fake bitcoin investment scheme was promoted by the two Nigerians from December 2017 to June 2018 by making use of three websites namely boomcurrency.com, wealthcurency.com and merrycurrency.com and had promised investor to avail risk-free returns of 20-25 percent with immediate withdrawals. Once targeted people start transferring bitcoin to their cryptocurrency based wallet, the two convicted converted it into Nigerian currency Nairas.
The two convicted persons need to be located, and the Feds is considering of taking help from Interpol to arrest the convicted frauds. Earlier, in July last year, one of the website used by the convicted men boomcurrency.com had mentioned it as a scam on Twitter.
From past 6 months, they both have managed to steal 10.88 bitcoins equal to $56,391 from three targeted people. During their entire bitcoin investment scam period, they have gained more than 50 bitcoins. The date on which they exchanged bitcoin to their local currency is unknown. They might have earned a maximum of $270,000, at today’s rate.
Three of the victims are from the US itself, one is from Oregon, and the other two are from California. The details of the transaction were found, and, out of three victims, one is referred to as Adult Victim 3 (AV3) in the document and has transferred two 10.1 bitcoins. On June 11, last year, AV3 of California had transferred 3 bitcoins to their cryptocurrency wallet and is related to the bitcoin investment scam. On June 18, 2018, AV3 victim had even sent 2.1 bitcoin.
According to the indictment document, the scam could have run for almost 2 years. It is even believed that the bitcoin investment scam might have started in March 2017, and ended in the previous month.
As per the reports, the two scammers are accused of 13 charges, including 11 wire fraud cases and one plan to do wire fraud and another charge of money laundering.
The convicted Nigerians are believed of using a specific trading method, but actually, they were only transferring the Bitcoin received from the targeted people into their cryptocurrency wallet and later they have exchanged it into the local currency Nigeria- Naira, US prosecutors mentions.
Now, the Bitcoin of worth 50 BTC received by the two Nigerians is through the scam or have they obtained legally is still not revealed. The indictment document also mentions that the 2 convicted have even used a photo of a 4th victim to expand the investment scheme.
The US Securities, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Exchange Commission together released a warning in the week, stating that demands like “risk-free”, “guaranteed profit”, absolutely safe” all these are the signs of fraud.
