The United States authorities are in the latest cryptocurrency news again. This time, the US charged and sentenced another LocalBitcoins trader who ran an unlicensed money transmission business on the peer-to-peer exchange LocalBitcoins.
The press release published by the US Attorney’s office for the Southern District of California shows that the another LocalBitcoins trader that will get jail time is named Morgan Rockoons and is a resident of Las Vegas. His sentence is 21 months in federal prison.
The release, which is featured in the coming altcoin news, showed that Rockoons made over a thousand different trades on LocalBitcoins with around 644 people as of October 2017, all while collecting as much as 36% commission on the trades.
Since his business was not registered, Rockoons continued trading and even received acclaim as the largest trader in the region. However, he is just another LocalBitcoins trader to get on the radar of local law enforcement, later getting jail time. Even though he was first arrested in 2017, Rockoons was released on bail after that and went on to promote Bitcointopia (which was an illegal real estate scheme) online and on social media platforms.
“Victims who sent Rockcoons Bitcoin never received their title to land as promised. To date, agents have identified at least 10 victims of Rockcoons’ fraud,” the release said.
Before Rockoons became just another LocalBitcoins trader who got sentenced, he pleaded guilty to operating an exchange without registering with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the US Department of Treasury.
“He also admitted to devising a scheme to defraud individuals in connection with the purported sale of real estate in Elko County, Nevada, that he did not own,” the release shared by many best cryptocurrency news sites noted.
Right now, everyone is asking themselves if LocalBitcoins is just another criminal conduit. Since Rockoons was another LocalBitcoins trader who got sentenced, people are seeing more and more users hit with charges due to money laundering and other cases.
In March, the platform was viral in the altcoin news for announcing that it will “soon be under the supervision of the Financial Supervision Authority in Finland” as the country progresses to provide a legal status for crypto and bring the sector under new Anti Money Laundering (AML) laws.
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