British man accused of selling deadly weight loss pills and stealing £15,000 ($19,350) worth of drugs Monero The tokens were then sold by the Food Standards Agency for British pounds sterling. First Monero cryptocurrency payment in the UK.
Monero is the largest Privacy Coin It hides the addresses and transactions of people on the network, which is why it's a popular token for those who don't want their activities traced back to them, legitimate or not.
Apparently, this is why Jack Edward Finney used Monero to carry out his illegal drug schemes. The 28-year-old Briton sold a variety of drugs on the dark web, including Viagra and anabolic steroids, but it was the sale of 2,4-dinitrophenol (DNP) that got him into trouble.
DNP is a dangerous weight loss drug that has been linked to 33 deaths in the UK. This highly toxic chemical boosts the user's metabolism, BBCBut even just a few pills can be deadly.
“The Cheshire Cyber Crime Unit has made the first seizure of cryptocurrency,” Detective Sergeant David McFarlane, of Cheshire Police's Cyber Crime Unit, said in a statement. “The unusual nature of the cryptocurrency presented some challenges, but these were overcome resulting in the funds being seized by the National Food Crime Unit.”
Finney faces an additional eight months in prison on top of the 28-month sentence he was given in 2021 unless he pays £23,000.
Monero (ExtremeThe ) tokens were not the result of police uncovering Finney's private keys and seed phrase, nor were they the result of any collaboration with a centralized exchange. Instead, they were transferred by Finney to investigators via a seizure order, with the balance being replaced with cash and the sale of a Suzuki Vitara.
The XMR was then sold by UK authorities through an undisclosed “cryptocurrency trading platform” and converted into British pounds, a process that took nearly three years after Finney was convicted.
In April, British police Expanded powers to seize cryptocurrencies Under Rishi Sunak’s government, powers were created to “destroy” cryptocurrencies, including the power to “destroy” cryptocurrencies if “returning them to circulation would not be in the public interest.” The post specifically cites privacy coins as a prime example. However, in this case, XMR was not “destroyed” (or “burned”), but rather returned to circulation through a sale.
“This is the first case of Monero being converted into cash and it shows that criminals cannot hide their funds in any cryptocurrency expecting it to be safe from the authorities,” lead prosecutor Adrian Foster said. “We will continue to pursue the remaining amounts as he gets his hands on more funds.”
But if Finney is in fact receiving further funds via his Monero wallet, this will be especially difficult because, unlike most blockchains, transactions on the Monero network cannot be seen – for example, with Ethereum, if you know someone's wallet address you can see funds coming in and out, but that's not the case with Monero.
Editor: Andrew Hayward
