"He's really smart, he's spent the money he stole and then he wants to plead guilty."
Chirag Tomar, an Indian national, pleaded guilty after being charged in the United States (US) with creating a fake version of the Coinbase website that allowed him to steal login credentials and then rob more than $9.5 million in cryptocurrency from hundreds of victims.
The 30-year-old Indian national accused of wire fraud and money laundering was arrested at the Atlanta airport on December 20, 2023 while visiting his family on a travel visa.
According to court documents filed in the Western District of North Carolina, 542 victims were defrauded of their crypto between June 2021 and Tomar's arrest in late 2023.
The US Secret Service was able to identify Tomar as a member of a criminal group following his use of an email account under his real name to communicate with his known and unknown co-conspirators in the fraud.
Tomar, who also kept spreadsheets stolen from his victims, sent fraudulently obtained identity documents to other email addresses used to open accounts on Binance.
Between June 2021 and October 2022, Tomar searched the internet about fake coinbase pages, coinbase scams, scams in the US and how to withdraw money from Coinbase without OTP.
Using the proceeds of his fraud, Tomar financed a luxurious lifestyle such as buying Rolex and Audemars Piguet watches including luxury vehicles Lamborginis and Portches then traveled to London, Dubai and Thailand but it should be noted that he has not yet been sentenced.
