In brief
- Three men have been jailed in the UK for a £4 million cryptocurrency fraud in which they impersonated police officers to trick eight victims into handing over their holdings.
- The gang built convincing fake police websites and laundered the stolen crypto through a complex network, spending it on cars, Rolexes and luxury holidays, the Metropolitan Police said.
- Police have recovered about £1 million linked to victims and are still tracing assets.
Three men have been jailed in the UK for a £4 million ($5.3 million) cryptocurrency fraud in which they posed as police officers to convince victims to hand over their coins—then spent the proceeds on Rolexes, designer shopping and luxury holidays.
The trio phoned eight victims claiming to be officers, warned them their crypto was at risk, and talked them into sharing account details or moving funds to what they believed were secure police accounts, the Metropolitan Police said in a statement. The group had built convincing fake police websites, and the coins were immediately stolen and funneled through a complex laundering network.
At Southwark Crown Court on Thursday, Anthony Ikenwe, 29, and Kevin Nwamma, 25, were each sentenced to six years for conspiracy to commit fraud and five years for money laundering, to run concurrently. Hamza Bashir, 23, was handed three years and nine months for fraud and three years for laundering, also concurrent.
Rolexes, a Dubai cash stash and the Maldives
Detectives found the men living far beyond their means. One had a recorded income of just £444 a year, yet the group bought a car worth almost £60,000 with crypto, kept around £500,000 in cash in a safety deposit box in Dubai, and holidayed in Thailand, Japan, Paris, Mykonos, the Maldives and the Seychelles.
They shopped at Harrods, Hermès and Louis Vuitton and routinely converted crypto into prepaid payment cards, according to the Met. Officers linked more than £1 million in crypto to wallets controlled by Ikenwe, and traced stolen funds flowing into bank accounts tied to Nwamma’s luxury chauffeur business. Luxury goods recovered in the searches were valued at more than £26,000.
The case began when victims came forward in January 2025. The Met’s Cryptocurrency Team said it used a data-driven approach—piecing together blockchain transactions, exchange records, communications, financial records and internet service provider data—to link what first looked like separate crimes into a single organized network operating across multiple platforms and jurisdictions.
“This was a highly complex investigation into a group of calculated manipulators who exploited victims’ trust by pretending to be police officers,” said Detective Inspector Geoff Donoghue of the force’s Cryptocurrency Team, adding that, “Criminals should be under no illusion—policing is evolving alongside technology.”
In November, officers raided seven addresses across London and Essex, arresting the three men and seizing luxury goods, cryptocurrency and 40 mobile phones. They recovered around £1 million tied to victims. Ikenwe and Nwamma pleaded guilty in April, while Bashir denied involvement and stood trial, changing his plea on the eighth day after being shown extensive evidence.
Posing as the authorities
Impersonating police has become a recurring thread in crypto crime. The closest parallel to the Met case came last year, when a scammer posing as UK police stole $2.8 million in Bitcoin from a victim’s hardware wallet. In the US, fraudsters posing as Denver police convinced a woman she had missed jury duty, then had her feed cash into a Bitcoin ATM to clear a bogus warrant—one of a wave of impersonation scams the FBI says has hit older Americans hardest.
Sometimes the fake officers turn up in person. In France, robbers dressed as police held a couple at knifepoint in a $1 million Bitcoin robbery, while in Ukraine, men posing as cops were arrested for extorting $250,000 in Tether from an entrepreneur.
The Met said it is still working with UK and international partners to identify others linked to the conspiracy and to claw back assets for the victims.
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