A judge has sentenced Australian citizen Kathryn Nguyen to a maximum of 2 years and 3 months in prison for her role in the theft of more than 100,000 XRP tokens in January 2018.
According to an August 11 report in the Australian publication Information Age, Nguyen was convicted of stealing more than USD 300,000 worth of XRP two years ago. She was initially charged in October 2018 and pleaded guilty to fraud charges the following August.
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Chris Craigie, the judge who presided over Nguyen’s case, said it was a „difficult and troubling decision“ to send her to prison. She will reportedly be eligible for parole in October 2021.
Australia’s first crypto-fraud case
Nguyen was one of the first people to be accused of crypto theft in Australia.
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In January 2018, she reportedly hacked into the email of a 56-year-old man with the same last name as her and stole all of his XRP holdings before releasing control of the account two days later. This was at a time when the cryptoactive was near its historical high of USD 3.84.
Reportedly, Nguyen transferred the Etoro to a Chinese crypto-currency exchange where she exchanged the tokens for Bitcoin (BTC), sending them to multiple purses in what may have been an attempt to launder the funds. According to the local news agency 7News Sydney, the Chinese authorities were only able to recover about USD 9,000.
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XRP falls from grace
The value of the XRP has dropped to USD 0.30 as of the close of this issue, making the amount of cryptomoney stolen now worth approximately USD 30,000.