US prosecutors have filed charges against Charles O. Parks III, also known as “CP3O,” for wire fraud and money laundering offenses related to an illegal cryptojacking scheme. Parks is accused of defrauding two cloud computing providers based in Seattle and Redmond, Washington, of $3.5 million to mine cryptocurrencies, including Ether, Litecoin, and Monero, valued at almost $1 million.
Parks allegedly used multiple aliases and corporate affiliations to establish accounts with the cloud providers from January to August 2021. He accessed heightened services and benefits, such as high cloud computing services and deferred billing accommodations, using these accounts.
The indictment states that Parks laundered the illegally mined cryptocurrency through decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges and a New York City-based NFT marketplace. He also evaded federal law’s transaction reporting requirements by structuring payments below the $10,000 threshold.
Despite having one account suspended for fraudulent activity, Parks allegedly created a new account with the provider within a day. He consumed over $2.5 million of services from the Seattle-based provider and defrauded the Redmond-based provider of over $969,000. He might face a combined maximum sentence of 50 years if convicted for the alleged crime.
There is a need for enhanced security measures to prevent unauthorized access and misuse of cloud computing resources in the cryptocurrency space for criminal actors who exploit sophisticated technology for fraudulent activities.
