The District Prosecutor's Office of the city of Sumy has approved and sent to court an indictment against a 23-year-old young man who was selling non-existent cryptocurrency.

According to the investigation, possessing special knowledge and skills in the field of IT technologies, the accused created a pseudo-trading platform for purchasing cryptocurrency. Subsequently, in one of the messengers, he met a resident of Sumy, to whom he offered his services in organizing the purchase of bitcoins. 

The young man helped the man create an electronic wallet on a crypto exchange and purchase 0.64 "bitcoins," for which the man transferred 60,000 US dollars. Having access to the Sumy resident's electronic wallet, the accused immediately transferred the money to his own account.

Realizing that no cryptocurrency had been credited to the electronic wallet, the man contacted his "consultant" again. The young man convinced him that everything was fine, but currently, any transactions were blocked because the cryptocurrency they had purchased was involved in risky operations.

The accused explained to the victim that to unblock further operations with cryptocurrency, it was necessary to purchase more bitcoins. Thus, the young man met with the victim and received another 100,000 US dollars from him for the supposed purchase of 0.92 bitcoins. However, he was unable to manage the funds as he was detained by law enforcement officers.

The actions of the accused were qualified under Part 5 of Article 190 (fraud committed on a particularly large scale and under martial law through illegal operations using electronic computing technology) and Part 2 of Article 15/Part 5 of Article 190 (completed attempt of the specified crime, committed repeatedly) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. 

The pre-trial investigation was completed by investigators of the Sumy District Police Department of the Main Directorate of the National Police in the Sumy region in cooperation with employees of the Cybercrime Prevention Department in the Sumy region under the procedural guidance of the prosecutor's office.