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The host of a weekly crypto radio show received a two-year prison sentence on Wednesday after deceptively applying for over $660,000 in Covid-19 relief funds and spending the money on building his own Alpaca farm and running a crypto show. Fifty-nine-year-old Dana McIntyre hosted The Dana Crypto Show and owned the Rasta Pasta Pizzeria in Beverley, Massachusetts. As detailed by the US Attorney’s Office, in March 2020 McIntyre applied for two different Covid-19 relief benefits under the names of his two children for two non-existent companies, one of which was called “Dana’s Dank Pies.” In an application, he claimed to have no work and no income despite still running and profiting from his pizzeria. He received $17,000 from the government in September 2020. McIntyre also successfully applied for a further Covid-19 relief fund of $660,000 in April 2020. For this form, McIntyre falsified the number of his employees, payroll amounts, and tax forms in order to receive the larger ...

A woman in Somerset lost £40,000 ($50,800) in a bitcoin investment scam that used the likeness of financial guru Martin Lewis. The anonymous victim, referred to as Lisa by the BBC, invested £200 in bitcoin after coming across a Facebook ad for what appeared to be a legitimate business. Scammers called her daily for two months, grooming her into letting them take out several loans in her own name. Lisa told the BBC, “Before I knew it, he’d opened an Experian account on my behalf and applied for approximately 11 loans using false details about my income.” In one instance, £55,000 ($69,800) was deposited into her account by the scammers.  Angered by the ordeal, she asked the scammers where the money had come from. However, this prompted the scammer to become abusive over the phone. Lisa said, “If I didn’t comply then I would lose all the money I’d made.” She subsequently sent the money to the scammer’s bank account.  She said, “He tol...

UAE-based Nigerian influencer ‘Mr. Woodbery’ has been sentenced to eight years and four months in prison for scamming US businesses out of $8 million, and must now pay back that amount to his victims and give up a fleet of luxury cars and watches, on top of 151 bitcoin ($4.5 million) already forfeited. According to the US Department of Justice (DoJ), 31-year-old Olalekan Jacob Ponle, otherwise known as ‘Mr. Woodbery’ and ‘Mark Kain,’ stole millions while living in the UAE in 2019. The fraudster relied on money mules to convert stolen funds into bitcoin. Ponle bought himself luxury cars with the illicit gains, including a Rolls Royce Cullinan, Lamborghini Urus, and a Mercedes-Benz G-Class AMG G55. The Nigerian also had a taste for Rolex and Patek Philippe watches, the DoJ noted. These items have since been confiscated by dripped out authorities. ‘Mr. Woodbery’ was part of a scamming group that tricked employees into interacting with ph...

A crypto ATM maker and a Texas sheriff’s department are locked in a fierce legal battle after police seized cash from one of the company’s machines and handed it back to an 82-year-old woman who had been scammed into converting $15,000 into bitcoin. The woman was reportedly looking up cooking recipes online when she received an email with a link that, when clicked on, claimed to have activated a ransomware vir US . After being directed to a ‘fraud investigator,’ she was told that her personal information had been compromised and that she should drive to her bank, make a $15,000 withdrawal, and deposit the money into the bitcoin ATM operated by Lux Vending. The unnamed victim reported the scam to the McLennan County Sheriff’s Office on April 27 and six days later, a search warrant was granted to retrieve the deposited cash . However, according to a suit filed by Lux Vending (which does b US iness as Bitcoin Depot) in Waco’s 74th State District Court, the seizure was “unlawful...