Topic: [2017-06-09] US Army Guardsmen Convicted for Bitcoin Credit Card Fraud (Read 4881 times)

In some countries, even for the murder of a person, they condemn for 8 years.
I do not understand why these guys received such a high penalty for fraud. I do not want to believe that the government did this just because there is a cryptocurrency in this story

I'm pretty sure that they would have to show I.D. to even shop at the Army PX store.  Army bases have been on elevated alert (therefore checking I.D. at the gate) ever since the longest-war-in-US-history began.  I could be wrong it's been a few years since I had occasion to visit any soldiers.

20 years of imprisonment for fraud? That's great to see as here the sentence for such crimes do not exceed even 10 years. They just used bitcoins for committing fraud which could be done in US dollars too. Even a member of this forum was convicted for a similar crime and there are many who create fake online payment accounts with hacked debit/credit cards and buy and sell bitcoins. Waiting for this to stop now and make cards more secure so that they can't be hacked or misused.

It's not negative for Bitcoin. Do you honestly consider that negative? Should we start saying that every single CC or ATM theft out there is negative for fiat money? That would be fun, we wouldn't be talking about anything else, because a CC/ATM fraud happens every hour.
National guard is nothing special, anyone can do it. For most of them it's only a part-time job.

Again, nothing else is new. Media will really filled the story and portraying bitcoin with this and that. For now anything bitcoin related news is worth because bitcoin is very popular now.

And for the US Army National Guard, what are they thinking? they really thought the bitcoin/blockchain technology is anonymous? I guess they are not worth to wear the uniform, they have criminal minds and using bitcoin to accomplished it. And it is good that the full hands of the law has caught those bastards.

"Shelton and James and Quentin Stewart face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison". Half of your natural life will be spend in prison. You ruin your life dude.

You by now must know how the media operates, nothing new here. It's basically the same as with the WannaCry flood that reached the headlines. According to the mainstream media, it wasn't people's fault that they run outdated software on their systems, but it was Bitcoin that triggered that attack. It's once again a solid see-me-and-click-on-me title -- often referred to as click-bait....

The fact that they used Bitcoin to pay for the credit card numbers doesn't make it "Bitcoin Credit Card Fraud". If they used dollars, would it be "Dollar Credit Card Fraud"?

Another negative news for bitcoin. But least they are caught. Bottom line is bitcoin just like fiat can be used in illegal ways to commit crimes. They can take advantage of bitcoin as pseudo-anonymous and they taught that they can't be traced because they used bitcoin. But they are wrong. Sentences has been handed already. And what makes it worst is that the people who committed crimes is a US Army National Guard.

Two members of the US Army National Guard have been convicted of running a credit card fraud scheme involving bitcoin.

According to the US Attorney’s Office in the District of Maryland, the two individuals, James Stewart and Vincent Grant, were indicted for using bitcoins to purchase stolen credit and debit card numbers of individuals and businesses from foreign websites. The two were first prosecuted last year, as previously reported by CoinDesk.

The defendants were accused of using magnetic strip re-encoding tools to apply stolen numbers to dummy cards, after which they would buy merchandise from Army and Air Force Exchange Service stores at US military bases, as well as other locations in Maryland and elsewhere.

The federal jury found Stewart guilty on charges of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Grant was also convicted for conspiracy to commit access device fraud and aggravated identity theft.

A total of five Army National Guard members were arrested and charged.

Of the other three in the case, Derrick Shelton and Quentin Stewart previously pleaded guilty for committing wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, while Jamal Moody pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit access device fraud and aggravated identity theft.

Shelton and James and Quentin Stewart face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, while Grant and Moody are subject to a maximum seven-and-half year sentence. A mandatory minimum of two years in prison for aggravated identity theft, on top of any other sentence, also apply to all five involved.

http://www.coindesk.com/us-army-guardsmen-convicted-bitcoin-credit-card-fraud/