In brief
- A UK man has received a 33-month jail term after stealing more than $650,000 from his employer and using the money to buy crypto for gambling purposes.
- Experts suggest that crypto-related white-collar crime may be on the rise.
- However, the transparent nature of blockchain tech may help firms quickly detect insider fraud, at least once they get a handle on crypto adoption.
A British man has received a 33-month prison sentence after being found guilty of embezzling over £500,000 ($659,500) from his employer and converting the stolen money into cryptocurrency, which he used on gambling websites.
39-year-old Jason Lowe, from Skipton in North Yorkshire, had worked for the same Lancashire-based firm since 2016, but between March 2023 and February 2024 siphoned off the funds in order to feed his gambling addiction.
Structured as an employee-owned trust where staff benefitted from profit rewards, the unnamed company first detected that something was amiss when its finance department spotted an unusually high volume of payments to two businesses, Meteorbrand and PPC Guru.
Lowe’s bank also flagged large sums of money entering his personal account, including payments via PayPal, yet when questioned by the bank he said that the sums were from the sale of his business, which had been completed in 2021.
The Lancashire company’s investigation initially aroused internal distrust, conflict and stress among staff members, with Lowe avoiding guilt for a period by the use of “lies and false accusations.”
However, the company submitted an Action Fraud report in February 2024, which led to North Yorkshire Police’s Economic Crime Unit beginning its own investigation.
Lowe pleaded guilty to fraud by abuse of position of trust, and on Friday was sentenced at Bradford Crown Court to 33 months in prison.
A hearing under the Proceeds of Crime Act will take place at an as-yet-undecided date, in order to begin the attempt to recover stolen funds.
Speaking in a press release, Detective Constable Neil Brodhurst of NYP’s Economic Crime Unit said the force is pleased with the sentence handed to Lowe.
“Even though the stolen funds were converted into cryptocurrency, we were able to trace the transactions and prove how he benefited,” he said. “Fraud is never a victimless crime, and this case highlights the wider ripple effect of Lowe’s actions—undermining morale, trust, and financial stability across the workforce.”
White-collar crypto crime on the rise
While figures on this particular area of crime remain limited, experts suggest that white-collar crime involving cryptocurrencies is becoming more prevalent, with financial crime tending to follow the money.
This is the view of Phil Ariss, a former crypto lead for the National Police Chiefs’ Council Cybercrime Programme, and now the Director of UK Public Sector Relations at TRM Labs.
He told Decrypt, “We’re seeing more cases where trusted insiders misuse access or company funds and route value into crypto for personal trading, gambling, or laundering—patterns that closely mirror the rise in traditional insider fraud during periods of market expansion or volatility.”
According to Ariss, crypto is increasingly just another rail being used by inside abusers, who can make things difficult for their employers by using multiple rails at the same time.
A key challenge faced by firms is “deliberate commingling,” he said, explaining that it involves blending stolen funds with legitimate flows such as payroll, reimbursements, or vendor payments, before rapidly moving them across exchanges, stablecoins, bridges, or obfuscation tools such as coin mixers to blur their provenance.
While the underlying cryptocurrency activity remains traceable, Ariss explains that many employers and organizations remain underprepared for crypto-related white-collar fraud.
“Self-hosted wallets, rapid swaps, and cross-chain movement create blind spots when policies, approvals, and monitoring haven’t been updated,” he explained, before adding that many companies haven’t really kept pace with crypto adoption at all.
This failure to keep up with crypto has left “gaps” in terms of how firms deal with internal access controls, cryptocurrency wallets, and conversion of company funds into digital assets.
However, while there also remain regulatory gray areas around crypto-related insider trading and white-collar crime, Ariss affirmed that the transparent nature of crypto may ultimately enable the rapid and effective detection of criminal activity.
He explained, “The key is operationalizing that transparency by equipping finance and audit teams with blockchain analytics, strengthening transactional controls, and ensuring real-time anomaly detection is part of the compliance toolkit.”
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Source: https://decrypt.co/350649/white-collar-fraudster-jailed-in-uk-after-converting-650k-in-company-funds-to-crypto
