The story of the 'Robin Hood Bitcoiner' who stole bitcoin to help the homeless but was caught by digital greed Criminal Amazon vouchers for England's homeless funded by cryptocurrency theft

On a sad day in January 2018, two men—one in a wheelchair, the other pushing it—headed to Manchester Airport to catch an Emirates flight to Dubai. James Parker, an unemployed man from the English seaside town of Blackpool, and Stephen Boys, a modest-living financial consultant, were on their way to the United Arab Emirates to invest money from a simple yet effective cryptocurrency theft. A crime fitting for an era of dog tokens and virtual monkeys.

While the 54-year-old men waited to board, Parker's phone received a call from an Australian number. After listening to the mysterious caller, Parker only needed to say a few words before hanging up: "Screw you, I'm not a thief."

On the other end of the line was the founder of an Australian cryptocurrency exchange, CoinSpot, who had hired a private investigator to track Parker to northwest England. Russell Wilson, the founder, informed Parker that he had stolen millions and demanded the money back.

A year later, Parker and Boys faced arrest warrants. Following a two-year police investigation and a six-week jury trial at Preston Crown Court in 2022, it became clear that Parker and his unlikely gang deceived the company out of A$37 million (US$24.5 million).

Aside from Sam Bankman-Fried's billions and the FTX scandal, smaller-scale cryptocurrency frauds have become a problem for British authorities. According to Action Fraud, the UK's fraud reporting center, cryptocurrency fraud in the UK jumped 32% to £226 million last year. UK Finance called it an "epidemic."

Back at Manchester Airport, the enraged CoinSpot owner accusing Parker of being a criminal didn't faze them. Parker was about to expand the international scheme. During this trip and several others, Parker and his associates withdrew cryptocurrencies into United Arab Emirates accounts and laundered the gains. The police discovered properties, jewelry, photos of stacked money and gold, and a property in Dubai supposedly purchased from mysterious Russians with a suitcase of cash.

The scheme didn't unfold in an offshore Bahamas enclave but in a city few would associate with the democratization of investment fraud—Blackpool, known for its pebble beaches and an old amusement park, marked by one of the highest deprivation levels in the country.

Parker's rapid rise and fall were compiled from court proceedings in Preston, court documents, and interviews with police, lawyers, and some fraud participants.

Bedridden due to smoking-related illnesses—chronic obstructive pulmonary disease—Parker became interested in cryptocurrencies in 2017. Though not a tech expert, he had some technical projects under his belt. Parker, living in a musty one-bedroom apartment, spent most of his time reading conspiracy theories and delving into the cryptocurrency world, which was gaining public attention.

Using his disability benefits to trade small fractions of bitcoin, he stumbled upon a bug in the CoinSpot exchange.

It was simple: if he put a bitcoin up for sale and then made the moves to buy it back, the computer system would register it as still having that bitcoin and erroneously credit his account with the sale. If he sold a currency on the platform worth £1,000 (US$1,247) and then bought it back, he doubled his money.

From his moldy-smelling one-bedroom apartment, Parker exploited this bug on an industrial scale. Prosecutors argued that he might not fully understand how it worked, but what mattered was that he was making money. And quickly.

Parker exploited this system bug hundreds of times between September 2017 and January 2018. Police records show that on Christmas Day 2017, Parker stole A$159,000 credits in less than a minute. He also used his CoinSpot account to generate up to A$3.3 million the night before one of his trips to Dubai with Boys.

But he couldn't simply open an Australian bank account in England and withdraw the money. Instead, he used his credits to buy more bitcoin and then transferred them to a different platform, where he could cash them out.

In a matter of months, Parker went from having nothing to being a millionaire. In November 2017, he moved to a room at the North Euston Hotel near Fleetwood.

Cryptocurrency-related crimes have surged in recent years since these events occurred, as the industry has moved toward mainstream acceptance. Last year saw the highest volume of cryptocurrency hacking, with $3.8 billion stolen from cryptocurrency companies worldwide, according to Chainalysis, a U.S. blockchain analysis company. Meanwhile, Chainalysis data showed that nearly $23.8 billion in cryptocurrencies were laundered in 2022, a 68% increase from the $14.2 billion the previous year.

Parker saw himself as a Robin Hood of the crypto world, donating thousands of pounds in Amazon vouchers to the homeless. He insisted on buying drinks for everyone at the hotel bar where he lived and bought a fleet of cars, including Mercedes and Ford Focus, for those close to him.

Parker began sharing the bug with a group of friends and acquaintances who helped him exploit it to the fullest. He first recruited James Austin-Beddoes, 28, as an accomplice to create accounts and exploit the bug. Later, at the hotel, he met Jordan Robinson, 24, who was drinking beer behind the bar. Kelly Caton, 45, the mother of Robinson's girlfriend, joined afterward. CoinSpot accounts were opened for all, and the money kept flowing in.

Explaining the flaw to his friend Phoebe Davies, he told her he was making a lot of money "messing with a website." Davies didn't understand how it worked and told Parker she thought he would end up in serious trouble. Unsatisfied with her response, Parker stopped talking to her within a few days.

Expansion, however, was one of the mistakes that allowed the crime to unravel. CoinSpot only detected the fraud when the volume increased. Russell Wilson was desperate and launched an internal investigation that led to the discovery of Parker's accounts.

Wilson said he even called Lancashire police, but an operator didn't believe that an Australian company would be a victim of a multimillion-dollar crypto fraud executed in Blackpool.

Concerned that others might know about the bug, Wilson decided to make a deal with Parker and Boys. About 436 Bitcoins would be returned as part of an agreement negotiated by Boys, with a promise that Wilson would not pursue the case.

A CoinSpot spokesperson said Wilson was not available for comment. They stated that the money and personal information of CoinSpot customers were never compromised, and their accounts are audited annually.

But in the end, the group's demise didn't come from CoinSpot. Suspicion and greed set in among Parker and his accomplices. Parker and Boys were arguing about which houses were in whose names.

Caton, who had withdrawn from the group, started exploiting the platform on her own. Her Google history was filled with worried searches about whether "making money with a bug" was illegal.

The plot ended in an equally unfortunate manner. Caton's daughter allegedly stole a bitcoin, and furious, the mother reported the incident to the police. When the police interviewed the daughter, the only thing she said was that they should investigate where her mother really got the cryptocurrencies.

**