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A bitcoin thief who stole $5 million of the crypto and posed in a dollar-filled bathtub is sentenced to 4 years in prison

Gary Harmon posing in a bathtub of dollar bills.
  • An Ohio man who stole more than 712 bitcoin was sentenced to four years in prison Thursday.
  • Gary Harmon pled guilty in January to stealing the cryptocurrency.
  • Law enforcement agents found a photo on Harmon's phone of him in a bathtub full of cash.

An Ohio man who pled guilty in January to stealing more than 712 bitcoin from a computer held by the US government was sentenced to four years in prison Thursday.

Gary Harmon, 31, must also give up crypto holdings and other properties valued at over $20 million by today's market prices, the US Justice Department said.

Harmon's older brother Larry was charged in February 2020 with laundering over $300 million of crypto by operating the Darknet-based service Helix - and pled guilty 18 months later.

In April 2020, Gary Harmon used his brother's credentials to steal over 712 bitcoin by recreating eight crypto wallets stored on a device held by the Internal Revenue Service.

The bitcoin was valued at $4.8 million at the time of the theft, according to the Justice Department, and would be worth just under $21 million at today's prices.

Law enforcement agents found a photo of Harmon in a nightclub bathtub full of dollar bills on his phone after the bitcoin vanished.

Prosecutors also alleged that he used some of the bitcoin to buy a luxury condominium in Cleveland.

As part of his sentencing, Harmon will forfeit over 647 bitcoin, 2 ether, and more than 17 million dogecoin, according to the Justice Department.

Read more: Larry Summers says the Fed has inflation on the ropes, calls out crypto frauds, and bemoans the debt-ceiling fiasco. Here are the ex-Treasury chief's 12 best quotes from a new interview.

Read the original article on Business Insider
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By: [email protected] (George Glover)
Title: A bitcoin thief who stole $5 million of the crypto and posed in a dollar-filled bathtub is sentenced to 4 years in prison
Sourced From: markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/bitcoin-thief-5m-ohio-prison-gary-harmon-bathtub-of-money-2023-4
Published Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2023 11:22:07 +0000

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