US, WASHINGTON (ORDO NEWS) — Two young men were sentenced to 2 years in prison for stealing 23 bitcoins by posing as customer support for a popular crypto-exchange on Twitter.
According to a press release from the United States Department of Justice, Karanjit Singh Khatkar and Jagroop Singh Khatkar , aged 23 and 24 years respectively and live in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada , were sentenced to 24 months in federal prison for stole 23 Bitcoin (BTC) from an American based in Oregon.
In the fall of 2017, the two brothers created a Twitter account called @HitBTCAssist in order to impersonate the Hong Kong cryptocurrency exchange HitBTC and scam its users on the social network.
They finally managed to recover the account credentials of a HitBTC user and stole 23 bitcoins from them , then transferred them to the American cryptocurrency Kraken .
A few days after the theft , the two scammers bought a Mercedes Benz brand sports car for more than 30,000 euros and spent the rest of the loot at casinos in Las Vegas.
After investigation, the FBI finally arrested them in the summer of 2018.
In addition to a 2-year prison sentence , accompanied by a 3-year suspended sentence, the two brothers will also have to reimburse the sum of 116,000 euros to the victim.
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