The leader of a Miami-based crew that defrauded banks of millions of dollars has been sentenced to more than five years in prison.
In a new press release, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) says Miami resident Esteban Cabrera Da Corte has been sentenced to 63 months in prison for masterminding a scheme that stole crypto assets and cash from U.S. banks on to illuminate.
According to authorities, from at least early 2020 through March 2020, Da Corte and his team used false identities to purchase $4 million worth of virtual currency from an unnamed crypto exchange and then falsely claimed to banks that the purchases were unauthorized.
Da Corte was able to deceive both the banks and the crypto exchange platform, tricking them into reversing the transactions and depositing funds into accounts controlled by his team. The bad actors then withdrew the money, but also kept the virtual currency they purchased.
“To carry out this plan, [Da Corte] and his co-conspirators opened accounts at the Cryptocurrency Exchange, often using photographs of fake U.S. passports, fake driver’s licenses, and stolen personal identification information.
The Cryptocurrency Exchange accounts were linked to bank accounts that the defendants controlled. The defendants used money deposited into the linked bank accounts, often through a series of cash deposits via ATMs, to purchase cryptocurrency.
That cryptocurrency was then quickly transferred to other cryptocurrency wallets outside of the Cryptocurrency Exchange that were controlled by the defendants and their co-conspirators.
After the cryptocurrency was transferred, the defendants made phone calls to the U.S. banks, falsely claiming that the cryptocurrency purchases were not authorized, causing the banks to reverse the transactions.”
In April, Da Corte pleaded guilty to the charges. In addition to his prison sentence, Da Corte was ordered to pay approximately $3.58 million in restitution and forfeit $1.2 million, the news release said.
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