A guy from Ohio faces decades in jail after pleading guilty to stealing Bitcoin (BTC) worth millions of dollars from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has issued a news release stating that Gary Harmon, 31, of Cleveland, Ohio faces up to 40 years in prison for stealing his brother’s digital assets that had been taken by law enforcement.
Gary Harmon pled guilty to wire fraud and obstruction of justice after stealing 712 Bitcoin valued at around $12 million at the time of this writing. Authorities seized BTC from Harmon’s brother, who admitted guilt to a money laundering conspiracy in August 2021.
According to the Department of Justice, Harmon confessed to using his brother’s credentials to access and steal Bitcoin, implying he knew the seed phrases or private keys required for remote access to BTC.
Larry Harmon, brother of Gary Harmon, was arrested in February 2020 for laundering millions of dollars worth of virtual assets via Helix, a darknet money laundering organization. At the time of his arrest, a crypto storage device was confiscated, but investigators were unable to access the Bitcoin stored on it. Bloomberg claimed that the IRS was holding the crypto storage device.
According to the news statement, Gary Harmon moved the Bitcoin to his personal wallet before employing coin mixers to cleanse the BTC. Gary Harmon pled guilty to his charges and agreed to relinquish the stolen Bitcoin on January 6.
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