A poker player charged with three felonies is in a lot of trouble in the Las Vegas Justice Court. Fillippos Liakounakos, who has no prior track record of live poker winnings, is charged with the duping of a beginner crypto trader out of $ 500,000. The accused seems to be a down-to-earth player. He is also facing charges of stolen identity, grand theft of $100,000, and conducting an illegal data transmission over a computer, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Police are actively following through with the allegations
The victim alleges that the money transferred was meant to be an investment in a cryptocurrency management firm. The victim, who is not publicly named, further alleged that he had to pay an extra $ 50,00 as a seller’s fee, after which there is no trace of the money.
The cryptocurrency management firm later intimated to the victim that there was no transaction under record of the inquired sum. Since blockchain transactions take place instantaneously, this is clearly a case of a con artist duping susceptible individuals who are not well-versed with the financial basics of cryptocurrencies.
Upon receiving the complaint from the victim, the police jumped into action, and with the help of the transparency of the blockchain, they were able to track the transactions on the public ledger from one address to the next.
Though the blockchain creates anonymity for those who are trading in bitcoins publicly, the case detective deployed the concept of peeling to ensure that the tracking of the addresses was done precisely in this case since there were many movements in the transactions.
Liakounakos reportedly made contact with the victim again.
Too much greed led to the capture of the fugitive. The fatal mistake of the accused is that he placed another call to the victim asking him for more money to the tune of $500,000. At this point, the victim was determined to catch the perpetrator and used the sender’s e-mail address to alert the authorities. The email was used for the precise identification of the culprit. Since this is a high-profile case involving cryptocurrencies, the local law enforcement assigned high priority status to the crime and invested all the cutting-edge investigative resources in tracing the whereabouts of the criminal, after which an arrest warrant was issued.
Reports suggest that Liakounakos was far from a spotless reputation in the poker community. Several co-players are coming out with allegations that there have been many attempts by the Liakounakos to defraud them through nefarious schemes. Some alleged that they were victims of scams perpetrated by the accused. However, they remain to be verified by the authorities. One of the major unverified allegations against the accused was made by Todd Witteles and Poker news that a scam took place with the victim being Cord Garcia to the tune of $ 600,000.
