Bitcoin Forum

The Kenyan police have arrested three peer-to-peer Bitcoin brokers Emma Kariuki, Stanley Mumo, and Timothy Gachehe for allegedly trading stolen money through the local trading platform LocalBitcoins. The funds were reportedly stolen by a person using the pseudonym “BADASS20” from the I&M Bank and a Safaricom Pay Bill account.

According to a report by regional media Kenyan Wall Street, the anonymous thief has stolen KEH 10.2 mln (around $100,000) from the financial establishments and used the money to purchase Bitcoins via the exchange LocalBitcoins.~ :)

There may be arrests under criminal offenses, depending on the laws of these countries. The important thing is not to be arrested by Bitcoin. But in the case of stolen and stealing, legal problems may arise.

i don't know if this is the first bitcoin thief arrest in general or the first one that i read but it is goo to see that for once the law enforcement somewhere in the world kept up with the technology and finally made some arrests of thieves like these.
we have read a lot of big players like the Silk Road thing but never these small time thieves. and mostly the news talks about the robbery and never the arrests.

I also read this news earlier, Too bad that those three Bitcoin traders got punished by just selling their Bitcoins, they didn't even know that the payments they received was a stolen money, while the one who really committed a crime that stole money from financial establishments has not yet been captured by the authorities and still unidentified. This is not the first time this happened and most of these fraudulent activities are happened in localbitcoins and also the reason why I don't use that exchange because there is no KYC procedures and you will never know if you have transacted with a criminal.

if you steal, i think that is great that you will be arrested.

Same thing if you scam people. Bad thing about btc or crypto is that is really hard to find scammers...

I think Kenyan Police has done its job as security to the people there ... this is one of the Kenyan government's concerns to Bitcoin.

Welp, I guess that happens in some countries then. Nothing that can be done for them beyond hoping that they are proven to be innocent and on the wrong end of a transaction that they weren't aware of occurring, but it is Africa so there's no guarantees of that ever happening sadly.

Seems like Kenya should get a bit more involved with their financial security processes and target people who are actually perpetrating a crime and not those who happen to be caught in the crossfire, for a lack of better words. I doubt they'll be compensated for their confiscated funds too, especially since they were likely trying to make more money as a business idea.

If bitcoin didn’t exist they’d still be thieves.

Lmao they must have thought they would be safe if they weren't using an exchange. Localbitcoins would surely cooperate with the authorities when dealing with that large of an amount. I'm sure they wouldn't want to risk getting banned in Kenya.

It's good that they were caught, but it doesn't look like Bitcoin can shake off its criminal-friendly roots anytime soon. These guys obviously thought they could hide the money using Bitcoin, and while they failed, it's not hard to imagine that people who know what they're doing can get away with this. It's things like this that pushes governments into more stringent regulations.

I think this is a bad news for real bitcoin investors. Phishers should be dealt with aggressively to make the crypto business environment more healthy. I hope the authorities will take action and deal with fraud in the crypto market.

Can someone clear this issue for me? I don't get it Why would kenyan police arrest this people for allegedly trading stolen money , reported by who? and can they confirm the person using the pseudonym “BADASS20” really stolen the money? Damn, this is really serious. You can now be framed up by just reporting that this and that account stolen money and traded to this exchange, and did the police already investigated the report? These police can be easily manipulated by these anonymous reports without even doing a LEGIT INVESTIGATION.

If they wanted to launder the money they stole, then they were, without doubt, doing it wrong.

The best way to launder money is to first trade cash OTC to BTC, then use a service like Shapeshift to trade it to an anonymous cryptocurrency like XMR, send it to yourself using another XMR address, then use xmr.to to convert back to BTC.

Having said that, monitor XMR transaction volume. On 2018 ICO scammers might start using the method above to launder their coins clean.