A resident of Pennsylvania, who told the bank false information about owning BTC for $ 640,000 for use as collateral for a loan, pleaded guilty to deceiving the bank.
According to guilty pleas, the twenty-three-year-old Randall Joseph Smail admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia that he used fake account statements on the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange to trick Pendleton Community into receiving a loan of $ 552,533.
Smile told the bank that he could withdraw BTC worth $ 640,000 only in amounts of $ 200,000 “due to tax problems,” according to court documents of January 27. Both statements were false, because Smile didn’t have a BTC on his Kraken account at all. He could face up to 30 years in prison and a fine of up to $ 1,000,000.
According to a study conducted last year, the cryptocurrency lending market continues to grow, despite possible risks. One of the main reasons for the growth in this area was the absence of taxes on such transactions. Back in 2018, Genesis Capital issued loans secured by cryptocurrencies worth more than $ 1.1 billion.
