“Hooked on WhatsApp: financier hoped for $47 million in crypto dividends, but will now spend 24 years in prison A Kansas bank CEO transferred $47 million of bank funds to fake crypto wallets after a fraudulent WhatsApp scheme. The FBI managed to recover only $8 million, and the banker was sentenced to 24 years in prison.”, — write on: unn.ua
Reference
53-year-old Shan Haynes, director of a small bank in Kansas, became a victim of “Pig butchering” – a sophisticated fraud with cryptocurrency.
In 2022, in a WhatsApp conversation, the sender offered a financier a profitable opportunity to invest in a crypto wallet with a very attractive return.
The system was easy to use — it worked through an app and included cryptocurrencies.
Reference
“Pig butchering” scams usually involve fraudsters who entice victims to invest money with the promise of a large profit and then disappear with the money.
How the scam was carried out
In essence, Haynes invested his own money in fake cryptocurrency investments.
Later, he began to “borrow” money from other sources: from the funds of the church that Haynes regularly attended; then from one of his daughters’ college funds and, starting in 2023, from Tri-State Bank, where he worked. This happened in transfers of 1 or 2 million dollars at a time, and even forced bank employees to bypass the limits set by the bank itself in order to make the transfers requested by the bank’s top manager.
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Thus, a 53-year-old man made transfers for 6.7 million dollars and another for 10 million dollars. He transferred these amounts to his fraudulent activities.
The partners assured Haynes that his investment would pay huge dividends, and he only needed to invest more money to get back what he had already invested.
The scheme was declassified by the CFO, and the FBI uncovered the fraud
The vigilance of the bank’s CFO helped uncover the scam, which led to a state investigation that revealed the full extent of the fraud.
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According to court documents, Haynes orchestrated an elaborate scheme in which he transferred more than $47 million in bank funds to numerous cryptocurrency accounts controlled by third parties.
The FBI recovered $8 million of the $47 million stolen by hacking a crypto wallet involved in the scam. In August, Haynes was sentenced to 24 years and five months in prison after pleading guilty to embezzlement.
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