A Harare man who specialises in cryptocurrency (bitcoin) business has appeared in court for allegedly duping an eye specialist of US$457 000 in a bitcoin deal by stealing the money from his accounts.
Lloyd Chiyangwa (30) appeared before Harare regional
Magistrate Mrs Marehwanazvo Gofa charged with theft and money laundering.
He was remanded in custody pending bail application.
The State was opposing bail on the grounds that Chiyangwa
had two passports and two South African bank accounts, which received part of
the money and was likely going to escape to South Africa.
The complainant is an eye specialist who operates an Eye
Centre in Harare.
The State alleged that sometime in July 2020, the
complainant bought crypto-currency whilst in India from a company in the United
Kingdom.
When he returned to Zimbabwe in 2021, he engaged Chiyangwa
who deals in cryptocurrency trading to set up bitcoin wallets, sale of his
bitcoins, exchange or move tokens from one wallet to another and purchase other
cryptocurrencies for his portfolio.
Chiyangwa subsequently set up five wallets for the
complainant, namely Trust Wallet, Exodus, Cosmostation, Wemix, and Metamask to
store his crypto-currencies accounts as well as two Trezor cloud storage
devices.
During the process, he had access to privileged seed
phrases and passwords of the complainant’s wallets.
During the period extending from October 2021 to March 2023,
Chiyangwa stole tokens from different wallets of the complainant and
transferred them to his wallet.
He did so in batches of US$261 500,US$49 950, US$98 915,
US$7 800, US$7 268, US$30 874, and US$5 155 respectively bringing the total
amount to US$457 468.
The court heard that the matter came to light in May after
the complainant wanted to trade using his Trust wallet and discovered that
Chiyangwa had transferred all the tokens into his own account.
Chiyangwa used part of the proceeds of the crime to acquire
two iPhone 14 cellphones, a laptop and a Mercedes Benz Sedan among other
things. Herald
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