British police have seized bitcoin worth almost $3 million from a teenager who set up a fake website to scam consumers. “At the time they were worth PS200,000. They are now worth a little over PS2 million.”

UK Police Take $2.8 Million from Bitcoin

British police have arrested a 17-year-old boy from South Lincolnshire and seized bitcoin worth almost $3 million from him, BBC News reported Tuesday. For legal reasons, the authorities are unable to identify the boy.

Prosecutor Sam Skinner stated that the teen created a fake website almost identical to Love2shop’s official site, which sells gift coupons.

He paid Google to place an advertisement, which resulted in his fake site being ranked higher than the real site in search results. Love2shop customers were tricked into giving their personal information. The prosecution stated:

People were duped into clicking on his website thinking they were accessing the official site.

The teen shut down the website after a week. Love2shop started investigating him after receiving a complaint.

He stole PS6,500 ($8,954) worth of vouchers and used the proceeds to buy bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies, Lincoln Crown Court was told.

When he was arrested in August last year, police found 48 bitcoins and smaller numbers of other cryptocurrencies. At the time of writing, this amount of BTC is worth almost $3 million based on data from Bitcoin.com Markets.

Skinner stated:

At the time they were worth PS200,000. They now have a value of just over PS2million.

Upon further investigation, police additionally found over 12,000 credit card numbers stored on the teen’s computer and details of 197 Paypal accounts.

The teenager admitted to charges of money laundering between April 9 and 16, 2020, and fraud totaling PS6,539 by false representation.

Judge Catarina Sjolin Knight ruled that he benefited from his crimes by PS2,141,720 and ordered that amount to be confiscated from his assets. The teenager was also handed a 12-month rehabilitation order. The judge stated that if he were an adult, he would have gone inside.

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