Individual Sentenced To Four Years In Prison For Illegally Operating Crypto ATM Network

In a UK first, an individual has been sentenced to four years in prison for illegal crypto activity worth over £2.5m and associated offences.

Crypto ATMs allow people to convert money into cryptoassets and/or cryptoassets into money. It is illegal to operate crypto ATMs in the UK without FCA registration. There are currently no firms in the UK with such a registration.

The individual pleaded guilty to five offences. The first two offences were operating a network of crypto ATMs without the required FCA permission, first as the director of an entity called GidiPlus Ltd and secondly as a sole trader. The third offence was committing forgery, where he created four bank statements in an effort to pass source of wealth checks with a cryptoasset exchange provider. The fourth offence was using a false instrument, namely false identity documents in the name of his alias to incorporate a company under the control of that alias. The final offence was possessing criminal