California Man Jailed For Processing $25M Worth Of BTC Illegally

California man jailed for processing $25 million worth of BTC illegally according to the US officials as we can see more in our latest Bitcoin news today.

Kais Mohammad who is a resident of Orange County will spend the next 24 months in federal custody for operating an illegal BTC ATM service as the US officials said that the California man processed up to $25 million with some on behalf of some criminal suspects. In 2020, Kais Mohammad who is also known as “superman29” pleaded guilty to the charges against him for operating a money transmitting business, money laundering, and failing to maintain effective anti-money laundering measures.

Judge Josephine Staton from the Central District of California sentenced him to two years in prison. According to the US Department of Justice, Mohammad was in charge of an illegal digital currency money service platform dubbed Herocoin from 2014 to 2019, and during the same time, he offered Bitcoin to cash exchange services and charge fees of up to 25% which is higher than the usual market rate.

The investigation added that Mohammad advertised the Herocoin services online and asserted that he will exchange up to $25,000 worth of the main cryptocurrency. Under the nickname Superman29, he met his clients and some of them had criminal backgrounds, providing them services but never questioning the source of the funds. The US authorities acknowledged that they put into action undercover agents that reached out to him and told him that money came from prostitution, human trafficking, and dark web activities but Mohammad still did business with them. In exchange for the two years in prison, Mohammad also agreed to give over 17 BTC ATMs, 18.5 BTC, and up to $30K in cash to authorities.

He was not the only person that will be in jail for this. One of the most notorious scandals this year was the Turkish trading platform Thodex and according to the authorities, the CEO of the exchange scammed people and fled the country with a huge portion of their funds. The officials in Turkey sent to prison six members that were accused of being part of the criminal affairs and two of them were the brother and sister of the founder and Chief Executive OFficer on the platform. The aforementioned invidious is the first to be imprisoned after others were released in the past few weeks because of a lack of evidence.