Crypto Crime Blotter: Scammers Dupe Jersey Island Man Out of £1.2 million, Backpage Laundered Cash With Crypto

In what we hope will be a regular series of posts, we've rounded up the week's biggest bits of crypto crime.

First up? A Isle of Jersey victim who sent £1.2 million to scammers who pretended to offer him or her bitcoin.

The scammers - who authorities claim came from Norway - spent 18 months convicing the unnamed victim to give up their life savings for a "Surefire" investment in crypto.

Jersey authorities are also waking up to traditional ransom scams in which victims are warned that video of their private moments will be released to friends and family if bitcoin isn't sent to a certain address.

The site, which closed last year, moved hundreds of thousands of dollars through crypto exchanges.

"Backpage also furthered its money laundering efforts through the use of bitcoin processing companies. Over time, Backpage utilized companies such as Coinbase, GoCoin, Paxful, Kraken, and Crypto Capital to receive payments from customers and/or route money through the accounts of related companies."

"According to court documents, the government seized several financial accounts belonging to Backpage owners, including a number of accounts held with Crypto Capital, as well as Global Trading Solutions-one of the many other names under which Crypto Capital operates," wrote Decrypt's Guillermo Jimenez.

The suspects - "23-year-old resident of Kleve, Germany, a 31-year-old resident of Wurzburg, Germany, and a 29-year-old resident of Stuttgart, Germany" - ran the Wall Street Market, a dark web market akin to Silk Road. The best part? They scammed their customers with a good, old-fashioned exit scam.

An "Exit scam" was allegedly conducted last month when the WSM administrators took all of the virtual currency held in marketplace escrow and user accounts - believed by investigators to be approximately $11 million - and then diverted the money to their own accounts.

Exit scams are common among large darknet marketplaces, which typically hold money in escrow while a vendor delivers illicit goods.