The ringleader of a Miami-based crew that defrauded banks out of millions of dollars has been sentenced to over five years in prison.
In a new press release, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) says that Miami resident Esteban Cabrera Da Corte has been sentenced to 63 months in prison for masterminding a scheme that involved stealing crypto assets and cash by scamming banks in the US.
According to authorities, from at least the start of 2020 to March 2020, Da Corte and his crew used fake identities to buy $4 million worth of virtual currencies from an unnamed crypto exchange and then falsely made claims to banks that the purchases were unauthorized.
Da Corte was able to deceive both the banks and the crypto exchange platform, tricking them into reversing the transactions and depositing money into accounts controlled by his team. The bad actors then withdrew the money but also kept the virtual currencies they purchased.
“To effect this scheme, [Da Corte] and his co-conspirators opened accounts with the Cryptocurrency Exchange, frequently using photos of fake US passports, fake drivers’ licenses, and stolen personal identifying information.
The Cryptocurrency Exchange accounts were linked to bank accounts that the defendants controlled. The defendants used money that had been deposited into the linked bank accounts, frequently through a series of cash deposits made using ATMs, to purchase cryptocurrency.
That cryptocurrency was then quickly transferred to other cryptocurrency wallets outside of the Cryptocurrency Exchange that were controlled by the defendants and their co-conspirators.
After the cryptocurrency was transferred, the defendants made telephone calls to the U.S. banks during which they falsely represented that the cryptocurrency purchases were unauthorized, leading the banks to reverse the transactions.”
In April, Da Corte pleaded guilty to the charges. In addition to his prison sentence, Da Corte was ordered to pay about $3.58 million worth of restitution and forfeit $1.2 million, according to the press release.
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