Instagram blogger faces up to 20 years in prison for cryptocurrency fraud

Blogger Jebar Ighbar, known on Instagram under the pseudonym Jay Mazini, pleaded guilty to money laundering using bitcoin. The blogger currently faces up to 20 years in prison.

As it became known, in March 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice accused Cebar Igbar of stealing bitcoins from his subscribers. The defendant recently pleaded guilty in federal court to three counts:

• cryptocurrency fraud by electronic means;
• conspiracy to commit unlawful acts;
• money laundering through cryptocurrencies.

According to court documents, until March 2021, Jay Mazini published posts about free money giveaways in exchange for bitcoins. The blogger urged users to send BTC to his accounts, promising to pay much larger amounts than the official value of bitcoins on exchanges. After receiving the BTC, the defendant sent the victims fake screenshots that allegedly confirmed the transfer of the promised money to the bank account. In total, investors lost about $ 8 million.

To avoid such situations, the EU will control the activities of crypto bloggers. The historic MiCA law on cryptocurrencies adopted by EU lawmakers contains a section on the regulation of influencers who talk about cryptocurrencies. According to Patrick Hansen, a representative of Circle, a stablecoin issuer, MiCA provisions may be considered as market manipulation if bloggers do not warn potential investors about the risks.

If the law had been adopted earlier, the crypto blogger Bitboy Crypto, who last July urged his viewers to invest in the DOCK cryptocurrency, which turned out to be a fraudulent scheme, would have been held responsible for his actions. Thus, an unnamed user who decided to buy DOCK purchased an ad from BitBoy for $ 30,000. In his video, Ben Армстронг «href="https://noworries.media/biography/brajan-armstrong/» data-bio-id="3684″ data-wpel-link="internal">Armstrong said that this was an advertising integration only at the end, so most viewers did not know about it. After the video was published, investors began to actively invest their own funds in the new cryptocurrency, which increased the value of DOCK. In August, Armstrong admitted his mistake.