White-collar fraudster jailed in UK after converting $650,000 in corporate funds into crypto

A British man has been jailed for 33 months after being found guilty of embezzling more than £500,000 ($659,500) from his employer and converting the stolen money into cryptocurrencywhich he used on gambling websites.

Jason Lowe, 39, from Skipton in North Yorkshire, had worked for the same company in Lancashire since 2016, but between March 2023 and February 2024 he siphoned off the money to feed his gambling addiction.

The public company, which was set up as an employee-owned trust where staff benefited from profit incentives, first noticed something was wrong when its finance department discovered an unusually high volume of payments to two companies, Meteorbrand and PPC Guru.

Lowe’s bank also flagged large sums of money coming into his personal account, including payments via PayPal, but when questioned by the bank he said the amounts came from the sale of his company, which was completed in 2021.

The Lancashire-based company’s investigation initially caused internal distrust, conflict and stress among staff, with Lowe avoiding guilt for a time through the use of ‘lies and false accusations’.

However, the company filed 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 was sentenced to 33 months in prison at Bradford Crown Court on Friday.

A hearing under the Proceeds of Crime Act will take place at a date yet to be determined, to begin the attempt to recover stolen money.

Detective Neil Brodhurst of the NYP’s economic crime unit said in a news release that police are satisfied with the sentence imposed on Lowe.

“Although the stolen money was 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 broader ripple effect of Lowe’s actions: undermining morale, trust and financial stability among the workforce.”

White-collar crypto crime is on the rise

While figures on this particular area of ​​crime remain limited, experts suggest that white-collar crime involving cryptocurrencies is becoming increasingly common, with financial crime tending to follow the money.

This is the view of Phil Ariss, former crypto lead of the National Police Chiefs’ Council Cybercrime Programme, and now director of UK Public Sector Relations at TRM Labs.

He told it Declutter“We are seeing more cases of trusted insiders abusing access or corporate funds and diverting value into crypto for personal trading, gambling or money 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 a rail used by insider abusers, who can make things difficult for their employers by using multiple rails at the same time.

A key challenge facing companies is “intentional commingling,” he said, explaining that it involves commingling stolen funds with legitimate flows such as payroll, refunds or supplier payments before quickly moving them across exchanges. stable coinsbridges or obfuscation tools such as coin mixers to blur its origin.

While the underlying cryptocurrency activity remains traceable, Ariss explains that many employers and organizations are still unprepared for crypto-related white-collar fraud.

“Self-hosted wallets, fast swaps and cross-chain movements create blind spots when policies, approvals and monitoring are not updated,” he explained, before adding that many companies have not kept pace with cryptocurrency adoption at all.

This inability to keep up with crypto has left ‘holes’ in the way companies handle internal access controls, cryptocurrency pursesand the conversion of corporate funds into digital assets.

However, while gray areas around crypto-related insider trading and white-collar crime remain, Ariss affirmed that the transparent nature of crypto can ultimately enable the quick 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 detection of anomalies as part of the compliance toolkit.”