As always, be careful guys.
NEW YORK (AP) -- A Florida man was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison by a judge who said he used a "pyramid of lies" to boost a business that helped criminals process millions of dollars in illegal bitcoin transactions.
Anthony Murgio, of Tampa, pleaded guilty earlier this year to conspiracy charges, admitting he knew he was acting illegally when he enticed friends and family members, including his father, to help him operate a crooked money exchange business.
"I screwed up badly," he said in court Tuesday.
Murgio is also allegedly at the center of a multi-million dollar illegal Bitcoin operation and is linked to a 2014 cyber attack on JPMorgan Chase.
Arrests in Fla., Israel tied to JPMorgan hack
The trouble started during his time at 101.
In January 2013, he was arrested on felony charges in connection with failing to pay more than $110,000 in sales tax to the state. The charges were later dropped after he paid $25,000 and investigative costs to the Florida Department of Revenue.
At 28, he owed more than $500,000 to numerous creditors and filed for bankruptcy.
Shortly after, in 2013, federal investigators say Murgio started an illegal online Bitcoin exchange called Coin.mx in which he and others are accused of facilitating $1.8 million in online Bitcoin exchanges for tens of thousands of customers.
Murgio, co-defendant Yuri Lebedev and others, investigators said, allowed customers to exchange cash for Bitcoins for a fee, in violation of federal anti-money laundering laws. Investigators said they knowingly exchanged cash for criminals by facilitating payments for victims of "ransomware" attacks. The attacks start with criminals blocking access to a victim's computer until ransom money, usually in the form of Bitcoins, is paid. By facilitating the payments, investigators said Lebedev, Murgio and co-conspirators enabled the attacks.
Murgio and his accomplices went to great lengths to cover their actions by operating through a phony front company called Collectibles Club, which was represented as a members-only club for collectors, the government says.
They also tried to scrub their money trail. Murgio transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars to bank accounts in Cyprus, Hong Kong and Eastern Europe and received hundreds of thousands of dollars from accounts in Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands. Murgio, investigators said, also gained control of a New Jersey credit union dedicated to low-income residents. He then named Lebedev and other co-conspirators on the credit union's board of directors so he could use the organization to process Coin.mx transactions.
He was a dumbass. As soon as you start moving large amounts of cash through the system, the government will take notice. And he was already on their watch list for previously failing to pay taxes. Word to the wise: if they catch you for a money crime once, don't do it again.