The former CEO of Mine Digital is accused of fraud for allegedly stealing $1.47 million from a customer who intended to purchase Bitcoin.
Former Mine Digital CEO Accused of Fraud
People say the former CEO of the Australian cryptocurrency exchange Mine Digital stole $1.47 million (2.2 million Australian dollars) from a customer who wanted to trade the money for Bitcoin. The CEO is being charged with one count of theft.
Aussie Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) said on Oct. 21 that the Mine Digital customer paid $1.5 million to ACCE Australia but never got the cryptocurrency in return.
ASIC says Colthup either paid ACCE’s debts with the money or bought cryptocurrency for other people, or a mix of the two.
It’s the most recent charge against the company, which went out of business in September 2022. People who owed the company money have been trying to get $16 million back since then.
The country’s securities regulator said Grant Colthup was told of the fraud charge at a meeting on Oct. 21 in the Magistrates Court in Ipswich, Queensland, Australia. The case against Colthup has been put off until Dec. 16, 2024.
Under section 408C of Queensland’s Criminal Code 1899, Colthup was charged. This part has a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.
CoinGecko data shows that when ASIC says the customer bought the $1.47 million Bitcoin, the price of Bitcoin changed between $18,890 and $24,580.
That Bitcoin would be worth between $4 million and $5.24 million now that the price of Bitcoin is around $67,460.
Between May 2019 and September 2022, when it went bankrupt, Mine Digital ran a cryptocurrency exchange site and provided other trading services.
The Australian Financial Review (AFR) reported on Oct. 13, 2022, that an early review showed that ACCE only had $20,000 worth of assets under its control, which is a long way from the $16 million that creditors said they were owed.
Brad Tonks, a Business Recovery and Insolvency Partner at PKF, was named ACCE’s liquidator a little more than two months after the cryptocurrency website went down on December 1, 2022.
The AFR claimed that PKF planned to sue Colthup a month later, in January 2023, asking the court to order Colthup to pay back creditors who were still owed $16 million.
