Marquis de Sade put it most elegantly when he said,
“All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost – the most legitimate – passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one”.
Bitcoin is by far one of most profitable financial tools ever to have existed. There have been instances where just hundreds of dollars have turned into millions within the span of a few hours. On the flip side however, billions have turned into thousands have well. It is profitable but volatile, fluctuating and most of all, eerily unstable. However, all of these are the market risks associated with all cryptocurrencies. Changes in value may cost a company up to millions of dollars but what if it’s not because of decreased value…but theft. Theft carried out by its own employee. That is something that occurred at Consolidated Trading LLC.
Joseph King, LLC was transferred to the cryptocurrency trading division in September 2017. Shortly afterwards, he began moving most of the coins into personal accounts. The company has come forward with documentary proof that Mr. King’s supervisors and seniors confronted him several times but Mr. King made one excuse or another at each time. Initially, he transferred 980 Litecoin ($48,000) telling the company he had moved them to an offline Trezor wallet for security reasons.
On another occasion, he claimed that the company’s Bitcoin funds were blocked and he was in the midst of recovering them.
An official criminal complaint later revealed that Mr. King had stolen neatly $3,248,000 worth of funds in Bitcoin and further $48,000 in Litecoin. The accused did end up paying $1,236,000 initially while a further $1,457,000 was recovered when the company sent representatives to his home. However, despite these efforts a further $603,000 remains missing from company’s coffers.
Mr. King is now suspected to have taken the Bitcoin funds in order to engage in his own act of taking part in private investments in the Bitcoin bubble hoping to restore the funds once a profit was made. What happened instead was a massive fall in Bitcoin value which led to Mr. King panicking and investing more to recover it back.
He was arrested in the second week of February. He faces several fraud, theft and misrepresentation charges as well as a corporate breach of conduct. A prison sentence of up to 20 years is also a possibility.
