A Vegas cash game pro, Filippos Liakounakos, has been arrested and charged with a $500,000 Bitcoin scam after allegedly attempting a second scam on the same person for $1million…
A Las Vegas poker player has been arrested for stealing $500,000 worth of Bitcoin from a cryptocurrency trader.
Be careful out there.
— Las Vegas Locally 🌴 (@LasVegasLocally) March 30, 2022
Though exact details have yet to be posted on the Clark County Detention Center online records, local media reported that 23-year-old Liakounakos has been charged on several counts, listed below:
- theft of more than $100,000;
- Using another person’s identity to cause a financial loss;
- Unlawful felony act involving electronic mail or transmission of computer data.
Police were notified of the scam back in November 2020, when an unnamed victim contacted the Internet Crime Complaint Center. The victim alleged that he had been contacted by a known business associate on Telegram, the encrypted mobile chat app.
The victim agreed to transfer $500k worth of Bitcoin in exchange for cash, with a $50k seller’s fee included. however, when he spoke to his associate the following day, it transpired that he had transferred the cryptocurrency to an imposter.
The following month, the same imposter – alleged to be Liakounakos – contacted the victim again on Telegram, this time looking for a $999,900 Bitcoin transaction.
According to police reports, an email trail allowed detectives to serve search warrants and eventually track down Liakounakos.
Filippos Liakounakos arrested for $500,000 Bitcoin Scam
The arrest warrant for Filippos Liakounakos detailed one detective’s role in the operation: “I reviewed the transaction on the public blockchain and observed the BTC (bitcoin) being moved rapidly in what is commonly known as ‘peeling’ to obfuscate where the BTC was going.”
Liakounakos is expected to appear in Las Vegas Justice Court on Wednesday.
Liakounakos has been named several times in rumoured scams in recent years, a now-deleted tweet by Dan Fleyshman accusing him of ripping off Cord Garcia, according to Poker Fraud Alert in 2020.
A year previously, a thread on the 2plus2 forum names Filippos Liakounakos as being involved in a dispute on a poker app, which saw him kicked off the site for not paying alleged debts, under the username “Kaspav”.
Exact details of all Liakounakos’ alleged crimes and scams are still rather thin on the ground, but we’ll bring you more as this emerging story grows.
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