Two men, members of an organized criminal group, sent to the dock for fraud and money laundering. The NAC's CARA seized a property worth over half a million lei

The Hincesti Prosecutor's Office, the Ialoveni Office together with the criminal investigation body of the Ialoveni Police Inspectorate, have sent a criminal case to court regarding two members of an organized criminal group, accused of fraud in particularly large proportions and money laundering of over 3.7 million lei.

According to the criminal case materials, two men, aged 29 and 21 respectively, together with other persons who are being identified, acting within an organized criminal group, dividing their roles depending on the planned criminal actions, pursuing the purpose of stealing other people's property, contacted the identified victims, misleading them, under the pretext of obtaining substantial profits, as a result of carrying out investment operations in cryptocurrency trading, causing them to transfer the requested funds to bank accounts managed by members of the organized criminal group.

At the same time, most of the money obtained from the victims was transmitted to another member of this group, and in order to guarantee the security of the transmission of these funds from the victims to the organized criminal group, the victim was given a password, which was used by the person who was to receive the money.

In this way, funds in the amount of over 3.7 million lei were obtained from the victims.

Furthermore, with the aim of concealing and disguising the origin of the money illegally obtained from fraud crimes, the members of the organized criminal group created electronic wallets to store the cryptocurrency on various anonymous platforms, which do not store the users' identity data, and from the amount of over 3.7 million lei, obtained through fraud, they purchased USDT cryptocurrency and subsequently transferred it to the electronic wallets of other members of the organized criminal group, thus converting the funds from conventional money into USDT cryptocurrency and transferring them to other electronic accounts of other members of the organized criminal group in order to hide the traces of the crime.

During the criminal investigation actions, funds in various currencies in a total amount of over 800,000 lei were identified and seized from the accused.

At the same time, thanks to the planning and collaboration actions with the NAC's Criminal Assets Recovery Agency, it was possible to identify and seize a movable asset, worth over half a million lei, in order to recover the damage caused to the injured parties.

For the crimes charged, the accused persons risk punishment in the form of imprisonment from 8 to 15 years with a fine in the amount of 15,000 to 20,000 conventional units and deprivation of the right to hold certain positions or exercise a certain activity for a term of up to 5 years for fraud in particularly large proportions and imprisonment from 5 to 10 years with a fine in the amount of 13,000 to 20,000 conventional units for money laundering by an organized criminal group and in particularly large proportions.

Note: A person accused of committing a crime shall be presumed innocent until proven guilty by a final court decision.