British hacker sentenced to 3.5 years for $900,000 Coinbase fraud
Elliot Gunton, a British hacker, has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison for his involvement in a scam that targeted over 500 Coinbase accounts and resulted in the theft of more than $900,000.
Gunton, who was only 17 and 18 at the time of the crimes in 2018 and 2019, utilized phishing websites to redirect online logins to a fake site, granting him unauthorized access to the accounts.
Having admitted guilt to conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering outside of the UK, Gunton faced Norwich Crown Court Judge Alice Robinson, who characterized the offenses as “highly sophisticated crimes involving significant planning and technical expertise.”
Previously serving a 20-month prison sentence in 2019 for stealing TalkTalk customer data, Gunton managed to avoid further incarceration by completing a 12-month rehabilitation order. In addition, he was instructed to repay $524,700 after hacking into prominent Instagram accounts.
In related news, a US federal court has ordered Abner Alejandro Tinoco and his company Kikit and Mess Investments to reimburse over $31 million following their involvement in fraudulent cryptocurrency and foreign exchange schemes. Tinoco and his firm were directed to pay $6.2 million in damages, $6.2 million in disgorgement, and $18.8 million in civil penalties to nearly 200 victims, with the illegal activities persisting from September 2020 until the intervention of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission almost a year later.
