malvernmugadzikwa
Online reporter
A SUSPECTED fraudster, who allegedly duped popular medical practitioner Dr Solomon Guramatunhu of US$500 000 in a botched cryptocurrency deal, was granted US$500 bail by a Harare magistrate.
Lloyd Chiyangwa was ordered by magistrate Mr Stanford Mambanje to surrender his travelling documents as part of his bail conditions.
It is State’s case that in July 2020, the complainant bought cryptocurrency (bitcoins) whilst in India from a company in United Kingdom.
When he returned to Zimbabwe in 2021, he engaged the accused, who deals in cryptocurrency trading, to set up bitcoin wallets that he could use to trade.
The accused then set up five wallets – Trust Wallet, Exodus, Cosmostation, Wemix and Metamask – to store the complainant’s cryptocurrency accounts as well as two Trezor cloud storage devices.
During the process, he had access to privileged seed phrases and passwords of the complainant’s wallets.
In the period extending from October 2021 to March 2023, the accused allegedly stole tokens from different wallets and transferred them to his wallet.
As a result, the complainant suffered a prejudice of US$457 468.
Bongani Ndlovu