24-Year-Old UK Hacker Sentenced to 3.5 Years in Prison For $900K Coinbase Scam

A young United Kingdom hacker, Elliot Gunton, has been convicted of a crypto phishing scam and sentenced at the Norwich Crown Court to 3 and a half years in prison after compromising more than 500 Coinbase user accounts. The recent update has raised discussions about the level of security applied by major exchanges to secure user funds.

Gunton, alongside his peers, committed this offense by diverting user logins to a fake website. Consequently, more than $900,000 in funds were stolen. Notably, Gunton is not a first-time offender as he was convicted for computer hacking offenses during his teenage.

Gunton Bags 3.5 Prison Sentence

According to a recent report by North Norfolk News, the Old Catton-based offender pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering outside of the United Kingdom. Interestingly, the crime was committed between 2018 and 2019, when he was 17 and 18 years of age.

Additionally, the hackers secured users’ private account access details after contacting several telecommunication companies to divert phone calls. According to senior presiding Judge Alice Robinson, the attack was “highly sophisticated” and required a lot of planning and technical expertise.

Significantly, this is the latest in his list of offenses that have seen the teenager amass wealth through computer hacking and other sophisticated methods from his home. In 2019, Gunton was sentenced in 2019 to 20 months in prison for stealing Talk Talk customers’ data, and reportedly receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency for it. At the time, he avoided jail term by completing a one-year rehabilitation order. Also, Gunton was ordered to refund £407,359 (worth $524,700) after hacking several Instagram accounts of high-profile individuals.

Matthew McNiff described Gunton as a loner who spends most of his time “drowning in computer use” and shutting himself from people. He added that Gunton has since sought to change his ways and has started a furniture business.

Meanwhile, the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has fined CB Payments Limited (CBPL), a unit of the global Coinbase Group $4.5 million for onboarding high-risk customers and offering trading services to them. According to the financial watchdog, CB provided services to about 13,416 customers in this category. According to the report, about 31% of these customers deposited around $25 million and initiated transactions through the Coinbase Group amounting to $226 million.