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Michael Richo, of New Haven, and formerly of Wallingford, has been sentenced in Hartford federal court to a term of 12 months and one day in prison, followed by three years of supervised release after pleading guilty to one count of access device fraud and one count of money laundering.
Richo admitted to engaging in an online phishing scheme to steal bitcoins from people on the dark web, U.S. Attorney John Durham announced. Richo carried out the scheme by posting fake links to online marketplaces on dark web forums. Those links directed his victims to fake login pages that looked like the authentic login pages for the various online marketplaces. When his victim attempted to log in, Richo stole the username and password.
With the username and password, Richo would then monitor his victim’s bitcoin balance at the real marketplace. When his victims later deposited bitcoins with the real marketplace, Richo withdrew the bitcoins before they could spend them and instead caused the stolen bitcoins to be deposited into his own bitcoin wallet.
Once he stole the bitcoins, Richo sold the stolen currency in exchange for cash, which was deposited into bank accounts that he controlled or was provided to him through Green Dot Cards, Western Union transfers, and MoneyGram transfers.
In total, Richo stole more than $365,000 through the scheme. He also had the information of more than 10,000 stolen usernames and passwords saved on his computer.
Richo was arrested on a federal criminal complaint on Oct. 5, 2016, and pleaded guilty on June 27, 2017. In addition to his time in prison, Richo, 37, has been ordered to pay a $10,000 fine and will forfeit various computers and electronic devices, precious coins, metals and $352,500 in cash that was ascertained by his scheme.
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