Poker Player Charged in Las Vegas for Alleged $500K Bitcoin Scam

A poker participant was charged in Las Vegas this week for allegedly swindling a novice cryptocurrency dealer for as a lot as $500,000 in in 2020.

On Monday, 23-year-old Filippos Liakounakos was booked and faces three felony costs in Las Vegas Justice Court docket: theft of greater than $100,000, acquiring or utilizing one other particular person’s identification to trigger a monetary lack of greater than $30,000, and an illegal felony act involving email correspondence or transmission of pc information, in keeping with court docket information.

The Crime

The Las Vegas Overview-Journal reported on Tuesday that the sufferer, whose identify is blacked out in an arrest warrant for Liakounakos, had notified authorities in November 2020 that he was the sufferer of a bitcoin rip-off.

The sufferer instructed police that he was approached by a enterprise affiliate on the encrypted cell chat app Telegram and agreed to a bitcoin transaction. The sufferer allegedly transferred $500,000 in bitcoin, together with a $50,000 vendor’s price.

The following day, the sufferer contacted the enterprise affiliate to be taught that they’d not been conscious of the transaction and the cash had been despatched to an imposter, in keeping with the Las Vegas Overview-Journal.

Within the warrant for Liakounakos’s arrest, a detective acknowledged that he reviewed the transaction on the general public blockchain “and noticed the BTC (bitcoin) being moved quickly in what is often generally known as ‘peeling’ to obfuscate the place the BTC was going.”

The next month, the sufferer was contacted by the imposter once more, who proposed a bitcoin transaction of just below a million. The sufferer obtained an e mail from the imposter, which allowed police to situation an arrest warrant for Liakounakos.

Accusations from the Poker Neighborhood

Just a few months earlier than the sufferer instructed police in regards to the bitcoin rip-off, a poker discussion board was discussing an alleged six-figure rip-off by a poker participant named Filippos Liakounakos, who was described as “the tall younger Greek child who performs PLO.”

In Might 2020, Poker Fraud Alert founder Todd Witteles posted a thread titled “Dan Fleyshman claims that Colossus winner Twine Garcia was ripped off of $600k by Filippos Liakounakos.”

“Twine Garcia is greatest identified for his 1st place end within the massive-field WSOP Colossus occasion in 2015, for $638k. I met him in 2018 at a $1500 NL occasion, and he was good/pleasant. Appreciated the child,” Witteles wrote within the thread, which incorporates an embedded tweet that has since been deleted.

“Anyway, this got here out as a result of Fleyshman determined to make use of the visibility of the (Invoice) Perkins drama to create a few of his personal for Fillipos. Undecided if the declare is true, and Fleyshman has been identified to stretch the reality, however my intestine feeling is that that is true or principally true.”

Fleyshman is an entrepreneur and poker participant who has $770,281 in stay match earnings.

Free to Play Slots within the US

Additional accusations in opposition to Liakounakos are outlined in a June 2019 thread on Two Plus Two posted by “journeyman,” who accused the Greek participant of owing $12,500 on the non-public membership website Kings Membership and refusing to pay. Liakounakos allegedly didn’t deny he owed the cash however mentioned he felt cheated and due to this fact refused to pay, in keeping with “journeyman.”

Liakounakos has a WSOP profile, which lists him as being from Greece and having one money from the 2020 GGPoker.com Occasion #84: $100 WSOP MILLION$, wherein he completed in 1,195th place for $559.

Liakounakos had his first court docket look on Wednesday morning.