A 25-year-old man from Florida has received a 47-year prison sentence after being convicted of running a crypto-stealing scheme that also included kidnapping and assault.
In a new press release, the DOJ says that Remy Ra St. Felix of West Palm Beach was sentenced to nearly a half-century behind bars for his role in a series of home invasion robberies targeting cryptocurrency investors.
According to the DOJ, St. Felix was initially recruited by co-conspirator Jarod Gabriel Seemungal, who had been stealing cryptocurrencies since late 2020 through SIM swapping.
The criminal activity involves changing the phone number associated with an account to one that the hacker controls and consequently giving the bad actor full administrator rights.
St. Felix eventually became the leader of the crew when the criminals stepped up their efforts and devised home invasion plans to steal crypto.
Between September 2022 and April 2023, St. Felix and his crew would invade homes, restrain the victims at gunpoint and force them to hand over their crypto assets. In some cases, the criminals either abducted the victims or assaulted them to get them to give up their digital assets.
The DOJ says St. Felix and his co-conspirators would conduct physical surveillance and communicate via encrypted messaging to plan their home invasions.
After the heist, the criminals would subsequently launder the stolen crypto using privacy-enhanced digital assets, decentralized exchange (DEX) platforms with zero know-your-customer (KYC) regulations and “instant exchanges.”
According to the DOJ, a total of 12 men have now been sentenced for their role in the schemes, which stole more than $3.5 million from the victims.
St Felix was convicted on June 25th by a federal jury in Greensboro, North Carolina, after a six-day trial. On top of the prison sentence, St. Felix was ordered to pay $524,153.39 in restitution and given a five-year supervised release sentence.
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