14 DAY TRIAL // US authorities have charged the head of a New Jersey credit union with taking a bribe and later allowing his bank to be used as an illegal Bitcoin exchange by the operators of the coin.mx website.
The accused suspect is Trevon Gross, 46, former chairman of the Helping Other People Excel (HOPE) Federal Credit Union in Jackson, New Jersey.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has charged Gross with taking a $150,000 (€137,000) bribe from Anthony Murgio, one of Coin.mx's operators, who was also arrested last July, along with his partner, Yuri Lebedev.
The three helped mask coin.mx transactions from financial institutions
The two, Murgio and Lebedev, were arrested and charged last summer with running an illegal Bitcoin exchange website (coin.mx) between October 2013 and July 2015.
With the latest indictment, the fog lifts on how the website operated for so many years. According to the DOJ, the two bribed Gross so they would be elected to the HOPE credit union's board of directors.
Using their position and working further with Gross, they used the bank's assets to intermediate Bitcoin-to-cash transactions made on the coin.mx website.
Further, the three also conspired to keep these transactions hidden from authorities by recording them as exchanges on a fake website called Collectables Club. The three were masking Bitcoin transactions as being cash-for-goods exchanges, such as stamps and sports memorabilia.
Gross faces up to 30 years in prison
By doing this, the three fooled financial institutions in authorizing credit and debit card payments for goods, which actually turned out to be Bitcoin. The three even advised coin.mx clients to lie to their banks about the nature of their transactions if ever asked.
This scheme lasted until early 2015, when the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) discovered Hope credit union's illegal activities and forced it to stop collaborating with coin.mx while also alerting authorities.
Gross was charged with a count of corruptly accepting payments as an officer of a financial institution. He now faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.