According to Morocco World News, a Frenchman bagged 18 months of jail time for using Bitcoin to buy a luxury car and giving a counterfeit check to another vendor for luxury watches. Notably, the plaintiffs accused the defendant of defrauding them.

As such, the Casablanca Court of Appeal ruled that the 21-year-old Frenchman, Thomas Clausi, would spend 18 months in jail and compensate the victims.

Notably, the defendant had been in a correctional facility since December 2021. As such, his lawyer, Mohamed Aghanaj, stated that the jail time was almost over. Counting from his incarceration, the defendant will serve only one month and a few more days in prison. 

Clausi’s BTC Purchases Were Fraudulent And Illegal

A few years back, the defendant bought a Ferrari car for $440,000 BTC from a French woman in Morocco. Later, the woman reported him to the authorities for fraud. 

Clausi also bought three luxury watches from another man but gave him a counterfeit check, leading the man to the authorities. 

In the first instance, the defendant made payments with crypto, which wasn’t legalized in Morocco. As such, local laws of the country considered the method illicit. In the second case, Clausi defrauded another person by using a check that couldn’t be processed due to insufficient funds. 

These incident reports kick-started the court proceedings against the Frenchman, leading to his incarceration in December 2021. Now, the court has ordered him to pay the watch’s owner a sum of MAD40,000 or $4,000. He will also pay customs authorities the sum of 3.4 million euros.

Morocco doesn’t support crypto payments, but its adoption and usage among residents keep soaring. In 2022 the country’s central bank, Al-Maghrib, announced plans to develop a regulatory framework that will guide the use of crypto by the citizens. 

The bank announced it in a press conference, mentioning that it has created a committee to oversee the process. However, while the bank aimed to regulate crypto usage with its draft law, the Alawi kingdom has remained negative about the move. 

Other Notable Sentences Against Crypto Scammers

Even though scams in the crypto industry are constantly rising, the authorities have been relentless in bringing the bad actors to book. 

Some popular cases in the industry have brought massive declines in many crypto and BTC projects. One is the arrest and detention of Terra founder, Do Kwon.  

Kwon was arrested in March by the Montenegro authorities and might be extradited to South Korea or the United States for multiple charges regarding the crash of Terra and investor losses.

Gilbert Armenta, who was previously involved in a romantic relationship with Ruja Ignatova, popularly known as the “Cryptoqueen,” has been sentenced to five years in prison for his involvement in the notorious OneCoin scam.

Similarly, Cooper Morgenthau, the former CFO of African Gold, has been sentenced to three years in jail for embezzling $5 million from various SPACs and using the money to trade meme stocks.

-Featured image from Pixabay and chart from Tradingview