According to a recent report, a man from Nevada, Morgan Rockcoons who is also known as Morgan Rockwell has been charged with wire fraud and the operation of an illegal Bitcoin exchange for using LocalBitcoins and has been sentenced to twenty-one months in prison along with the forfeiture of $80,600 in illegal profits by U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Battaglia.
Morgan Rockcoons Sold Lands that he Doesn’t Own in Exchange for BTC
A statement issued by the Department of Justice revealed that Rockcoons who used to live in Las Vegas was arrested on 29th October 2018 but on the 7th March 2019, he pleaded guilty to the charges of operating a Bitcoin exchange without registering with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the U.S. Department of Treasury and the scamming of people by selling lands that didn’t belong to him to them.
Reports showed that Morgan Rockcoons owned about 5 acres of land but sold 18 acres of land which was supposed to be used to build Bitcointopia, a “Bitcoin megacity” in Elko County, Nevada where the largest virtual currency in the world would be a legal tender.
The Department of Justice Enforces New FinCEN guidelines
Earlier in May, FinCEN which is a bureau of the U.S. Department of Treasury created new rules regarding the types of businesses that are related to the virtual currency which will be regulated under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). However, the verdict against Rockcoons has caused the regulator to start the enforcement of its newly established guidelines.
The new rules state that any individual who trades and sells Bitcoin and other digital currencies on platforms like LocalBitcoins are expected to be under the BSA, it further noted that the laws apply to everyone “regardless of the regularity or formality of such transactions or the location from which the person is operating.”
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