Instagram influencer charged over duping followers out of $2.5M BTC | Hacker News Reader

Instagram influencer charged over duping followers out of $2.5M BTC

cointelegraph.com

32 pointspaulpauper10 comments

I was hoping this was crackdown on the recent influencer-coins, but it’s just basic wire fraud, offering to buy BTC over market price and then just not wiring the money. Wonder how he expected to get away with it.

crypto scammers on twitter and youtube have been getting away with it for years. his mistake was tying it to his real identity

Should have sold them Bitcoin ( $33,461.37 ) sent out Bitcoin cash ( $494.26 ). Technically sending them Bitcoin, just on a different blockchain.

Leaving the core of the article aside, I am fascinated by the FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge officially saying "a quick search of the Interwebs". Either he's really young or someone at the CoinTelegraph has one of those XKCD auto-replace plugins [1] and forgot to turn it off.

[1] https://xkcd.com/1288/

That phrase is directly quoted from a press release on the official US Department of Justice website for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/popular-instagram-perso...

So I think somebody at the Justice department has an extension like that installed.

The guy’s page [1] says he joined the FBI in 1998 - in my mind that puts him in his early to mid forties, maybe? Say he joined at 23. The top urbandictionary entry for “interweb” dates from 2003; our man is 28 and by no means incapable of taking on new slang terms.

[1] https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/newyork/assista...

what does $2.5 M BTC mean? 2.5 M dollars (don't care as long as I wasn't duped) or 2.5M BTC (OMG!)?

Pretty sure the $ is left out where the unit is BTC, this guy is small time but one of many.

2.5M BTC is 83 billion dollars

Give or take 30% depending on how Elon Musk's feeling that day.

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