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Drinking wine together, a man was scammed to lose $700,000 from a cryptocurrency wallet

25-year-old company director, Luke John Milton is currently facing several allegations that he scammed around $700,000 in cryptocurrency from his drinking buddy. Several police officers testified against the suspect during the case hearing that took place before judge Donatella Frendo Dimech.

The 27-year old victim claims that the accused stole his cryptocurrency worth $700,000 while they were drinking

The story goes as follows. The person accused is a 25-year-old company director named Luke John Milton. The victim was a 27-year-old man named Dillon Attard. A few days before the incident, Milton came across a blockchain project and had been seeking advice on investing €5,000 (about $5,932) through his mobile phone.

Milton met Attard for lunch at a restaurant in Sliema after he asked Attard for help making the said investment. When the two met, Attard told Milton that the market was extremely volatile that day but he was determined to keep trading. Attard then gave his phone to the defendant to scan the barcode on his crypto wallet, only for Milton to transfer the money in the victim’s wallet to another, while still drinking with him.

When the victim felt something was up, he immediately snatched the defendant’s phone and only found that his crypto wallet containing about 424,670.97 Unizen tokens worth $700,000 has turned zero.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I took the mobile back and saw that my wallet balance was zero,” the victim lamented.

The first person to testify was a police sergeant. This policeman claimed the victim called him and said he had fallen into a big scam, asking him to hurry there to avoid the suspect escaping. When he arrived at the above location, he found the victim and the accused drinking together.

The accused claimed to have not received anything and that instead, he had been the victim of fraud. The two men were advised to file police reports against each other. When police from the Financial Crimes Investigation Department (FCID) arrived and demanded the men hand over their phones, Milton had suddenly become agitated, shouting “why are you going to arrest me?”.

He faces the following charges: money laundering, misappropriation of funds, theft of cryptocurrency, gross resistance to arrest, possession of items used for fraud, and handling of goods stolen, among other things.

Bail submissions were lengthy and at times heated, with the magistrate intervening to calm things down. The accused had not given the police his device password and this will require the police to engage experts from abroad to crack it. The case continues on 11 August.

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