According to a report from The New York Times on 29, Detective Roberto Cordero, part of Mayor Eric Adams’ security team, picked up investor Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan from the airport and drove him to the townhouse.

The other officer, Detective Raymond J. Low, was reportedly involved in guarding the building where Carturan said he was held.

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Both officers are currently under internal review and have been reassigned to non-operational duties. City officials say Cordero was working off-duty when he drove Carturan, while Low may have been paid privately by one of the suspects to provide security.

NYPD officers need official permission to take on side jobs in private security. The Internal Affairs division is handling the investigation.

Two men have been charged in the case, John Woeltz, also known as the “crypto king of Kentucky”, and William Duplessie, a Swiss national who co-founded a crypto investment firm.

Woeltz was officially indicted by a grand jury on May 29. His lawyer requested a $2 million bond by arguing that Woeltz has no criminal record and holds a philosophy degree. Meanwhile, Duplessie remains in custody, with his indictment still pending.

Recently, Vietnamese authorities arrested five individuals accused of operating a large-scale crypto scheme called Matrix Chain. How did the police uncover the case? Read the full story.

The situation began when Sina Estavi, Cryptoland’s CEO, was arrested in 2021 on charges of harming Iran’s financial system. This led to the shutdown of the exchange and left over 51,000 users without access to their funds.

Later, agents from the IRGC’s intelligence and economic crimes units were given control of the seized assets. But instead of protecting the funds, several of them allegedly moved tokens to wallets under their control and sold them.

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Iran International, a Persian-language satellite television channel, named Mehdi Hajipour and Mehdi Badi as central figures in the scheme. Hajipour was found to have moved millions in BRG tokens, the platform’s native coin. Reports say his personal wealth jumped from around $40,000 to over $14 million within four months.

The situation became more serious when Hajipour was caught taking a $10,000 payment from Estavi. Estavi thought he was buying back some of the stolen tokens through a third party, but the buyer was Hajipour using a fake identity.

Two more IRGC members, Majid Jahan Parto and Majid Tabatabaei, were linked to the scheme. Four others are accused of creating fake documents to cover up the transactions. Badi, one of the main suspects, is also related to a former high-ranking IRGC official.

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice (DOJ) seized $201,400 in cryptocurrency tied to Hamas on March 27. How? Read the full story.