Crypto Crooks Get 12 Years: UK Throws Cold Water on Get-Rich-Quick Schemes 😬

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  • Two men sentenced in the UK: twelve years of state-sponsored hospitality for crypto swindle. đŸ”
  • Two years spent fleecing victims. Sixty-five people: savings vanished, faith in humanity questionable.
  • FCA stern: Crypto scams rising—reminder, the house always wins, unless you’re the house, then it’s prison. 🚔

In the realm where new currencies dawn brighter than Siberian sunrises, two enterprising Britons—Raymondip Bedi and Patrick Mavanga—harnessed the age-old power of persuasion, ringing telephones and empty promises alike. But the only mining done here was of wallets, and the only coins unearthed filled their own pockets.

On a Thursday both gray and humid (as ever), Southwark Crown Court became the arena. Twelve years, the state declared, would suffice: Five years and four months for Bedi, six years and six months for Mavanga. One cannot ascend to crypto heaven without first passing through the underworld—and Judge Griffiths played the ferryman, coinless and stern.

UK: Where Dreams Turn to Scams, and Scammers Turn to Prisoners

February 2017 to June 2019: from the depths of winter to the sticky promise of another British summer, our dynamic duo worked the phones. “Invest!” they cried. “Your savings will soar!” Alas, much like Soviet wheat harvests, reality failed to deliver. Sixty-five souls believed, one and a half million pounds disappeared—no one discovered blockchain’s miracles, unless the miracles in question involved gaps in bank accounts. đŸ•łïžđŸ’ž

The law, ever awake, never forgetful—even if it sometimes naps in the Duma—identified Bedi and Mavanga as “major actors.” Judge Griffiths did not mince words. Through “the regulatory system, a coach and horses” was driven, leaving splinters for the rest. Rules were trampled, innocence trampled further—sympathy was notably absent as the sentences fell, cold as a gulag winter.

At the center, the FCA: bureaucratic but persistent, like ants processing a fallen sugar cube. Steve Smart, joint executive director and—by title—the most intelligent in the room, called out the “ruthless cheating” of the crypto kabal. He offered a warning to criminals: not so much “don’t do it” as “at least bring snacks for the cell.” đŸ„Ș

Prison: Still the Only Decentralized Ledger They Truly Fear

Scam’s up—literally. Fraudsters cold-call, push deals quicker than Lubyanka interrogators, plaster websites with more promises than a five-year plan. The FCA waves its finger at the crowd: vigilance required, eyes open, ears alert, paranoia engaged.

Bedi and Mavanga, social animals to the end, had accomplices: 2023, two more were charged and promptly joined the game of musical cells. Meanwhile, the court fumbles at confiscation, like NKVD auditors unearthing hidden rubles: not fast, but eventually, something turns up. The hope, of course, is to repay the victims; the reality is that even the ghosts of robbed savings are hard to catch.

The greater message? “You can’t escape justice,” trumpets the government. “Crypto or not, fraud is fraud.” Yet as any survivor of bureaucracy knows, justice runs on its own time—today, though, for once, it has arrived on schedule, feet crunching through the snow.

Bedi and Mavanga: two less faces in the wild-west of finance; the FCA and the courts: one cautious foot forward for the battered optimism of savers everywhere. Crypto may offer new dreams, or nightmares—and for 65, that dream bled into farce. In the end, in the words of criminal folklore and Soviet grandmothers: “No matter how much you run, prison shoes catch every heel.” đŸ„Č

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2025-07-08 02:36