Japanese Police Arrest A “Teenage Litecoin Exchange Operator
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Teen arrested for running illegal Litecoin exchange
On March 4, the Cyber Crime Control Division of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department charged an 18-year-old man with violating the Payment Services Act for running an illegal Litecoin exchange.
Japanese police suspect other teens may be running crypto exchanges
Officials said the unnamed teen is a third-year high school student who lives in Miyakonojo, a city in Miyazaki Prefecture. (Source: TradingView).
Japanese police suspect that other teenagers may be running crypto exchanges.
According to officials, the unnamed teenager is a third-year high school student from Miyakonojo, Miyazaki Prefecture. Police said the teenager made about $20,000 from trading on his platform.
Police said they have referred the teenager’s case to prosecutors and believe he is running a crypto trading website. They believe the high school student sold LTC to both older adults and other students. Officers identified at least 30 people, including 20 “teenagers.”
Japan has strict regulations
A teenage suspect is charged for running a virtual currency exchange business “without registration.”
Japanese cryptocurrency exchange operators must apply for approval from the Financial Services Agency. It is a lengthy and complex process that has only been completed by a few heavily supported IT startups and firms. Officials believe that illegal exchanges are now taking place online and using social media as an advertising channel. Police say the student traded LTC with other teens.
Crypto exchange operator traded LTC with other teenagers
Officials stated the teenager’s activity on the platform between July and September 2023.
Additionally, they said that, among other transactions, a $400 PayPay was paid to “two teenage students” to purchase Litecoin. Police said the suspect received $166 in exchange for LTC from ”an office worker in her 40s” in August of the same year.
She confessed to using the teenager’s platform and told police officers that
she wanted to play at an online casino where cryptoassets could be used as stake money.
According to the Cyber Crime Control Division, the teenager “wooed” customers by offering lower exchange rates than other unregistered platforms.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. Japanese police face an uphill battle in the fight against crypto trading by teenagers. Mainichi reported:
Buying and selling virtual currencies without registration appears to be widespread among online social networking sites. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department has expanded its investigation amid suspicions that juveniles may be involved.
Japan’s stocks are breaking records and a tax-free account is encouraging the country’s youth to buy stocks. @GearoidReidy. It must be easier to just buy one https://t.co/4cOYmK0weW via @opinion
— Bloomberg (@business) March 5, 2024
In 2022, police in Gunma Prefecture arrested an 18- A year-old man is suspected of attempting to defraud a man nearly three times his age out of over $17,000 as part of a crypto fraud scheme. The crypto exchange industry is governed by two laws in Japan, the Payment Services Act of 2017 and a 2020 amendment to that law. The FSA is required to receive reports from platform operators. The FSA also requires that they adhere to Financial Action Task Force guidelines and comprehensive Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) protocols.
