HitBTC Scammers Get Two Years in Prison in the US

The US justice system passed a 24 months prison sentence to two Canadian nationals, who were involved in the theft of Bitcoins by scamming people.
Karanjit Singh Khatkar and Jagroop Singh Khatkar both were arrested last year by the US law enforcement and were charged with six counts of wire fraud and for conspiring to commit money laundering.
Both pled guilty to all the charges in December and as mandated by their plea agreement were fined $184,511 as a prepayment of restitution to their victim.
Notably, the maximum prison time for the charges is up to 20 years.
Along with the prison time, the perpetrators will be kept under supervised release for three more years.
Crypto scams in the rise
As earlier, they were charged for dumping an Oregon resident of more than 23.2 bitcoins by cloning the Twitter handle of HitBTC, a Hong Kong-based crypto exchange.
The indictment detailed that the two defrauded people from October 2017 and continuing until August 2018.
“Using the fraudulent Twitter account, the defendants responded to the Oregon victim’s questions about withdrawing virtual currency from her HitBTC account,” the official press release by the Department of Justice noted. “The defendants convinced the victim to send information they could use to log on and take over her email, HitBTC and Kraken accounts.”
The victim lost thousands of dollars as the two took over her emails and transferred in excess of $200,000 in crypto assets from HitBTC to their Kraken accounts.
As law enforcement remains vigilant, many crypto criminals are getting nabbed in the United States.
Earlier this month, two Chinese nationals were charged for their involvement in a with the stolen funds from a crypto exchange. The US securities regulator also for pulling an initial coin offering (ICO) scam.