By
Bena Ilyas
April 25th, 2024
A crypto millionaire from Finland has lost more than 5,500 bitcoins due to a scam in Thailand. A famous Thai film actor is accused of having been involved.
While the crypto market is continuing its rapid growth and development, more and more celebrities are joining the rows of crypto supporters and role models. Nevertheless, for a famous Thai actor his work with cryptos resulted into police intervention.
As it has been informed by the Thai media, Jiratpisit Jaravijit, also known as Boom, was arrested after allegations of his involvement in a money laundering scheme with Bitcoin. As a result of such a scam, a Finnish man lost $34 million.
In June 2017, the 22-year-old crypto millionaire from Finland became a victim of a scam scheme in which the actor together with other scammers took part. The victim was convinced to send a certain amount of money in Bitcoin to a number of addresses that were linked to the companies within the business venture.
The money should be allocated for investments into several Thai stocks, a casino in Macau as well as a new cryptocurrency called Dragon Coin – a crypto coin used in gaming platforms. The group explained Finnish businessman that after issuance, the Dragon Coin can be used to play at the casino. They also took him to a casino in Macau in order to show absolute legitimacy of the plan.
For the victim, the scheme seemed to be rather reliable and he decided to invest into the deal. As a result, he transferred 5,564 Bitcoins to the group and began waiting for good returns.
Nevertheless, some months later, when he saw no returns, he took a decision to file a complaint to Thailand’s Crime Suppression Division. He did it in January together with his local business partner who rightfully thought that the whole scheme was a scam.
After the investigations held by the Crime Suppression Division, it was alleged that the group of scammers hadn’t made any investments for their victim. Instead of fulfilling their obligations, they exchanged all the received Bitcoins into Thai baht. As it was investigated, these funds were deposited into seven bank accounts.
At the moment, it is not specified when the Bitcoin assets were sold, nevertheless, it is supposed that fraudsters managed to receive profits of approximately 800 million baht which is nearly $34 million. It’s worth mentioning that the sum of 5,564 Bitcoins, if taken at the price of the previous year’s high of more than $19,000, is equivalent to more than $100,000,000.
The Crime Suppression Division has also found out that the actor’s sibling Prinya Jaravijit was the head of the scheme. Nevertheless, earlier, he has managed to leave the country for the U.S. Currently, the authorities are working on establishing collaboration with the U.S. authorities to track him down.
Meanwhile, this is not the only case when cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, have been used as targets of crime. As it has been reported by CoinSpeaker, just recently, the British police found a crypto wallet with 295 Bitcoins while conducting the raid at the house of a criminal, who was charged for cannabis cultivation and money laundering. While the case with Thai celebrity remains to be open, the drug dealer had to part with all the Bitcoins seized.