Californian Pleads Guilty to Running Unlicensed Multimillion-Dollar Money Transferring Business

Thirty months in prison. That’s the sentence that Los Angeles resident Theresa Tetley is facing in a case involving her illegal money transferring business.

The 50-year-old operated under the moniker Bitcoin Maven and made at least $300,000 annually by trading Bitcoin (BTC) between 2014 and 2017 through a listing on localbitcoins.com, Cointelegraph reported.

Over the same time period, she also conducted dealings valued between $6 million to $9.5 million, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Tetley has already pleaded guilty to the accusations, including financial dealings where she exchanged 80 BTC for $70,000, which prosecutors allege to have been the proceeds of a certain drug deal. Prosecutors are pushing for a 30-month federal prison sentence while Tetley’s defense is trying to reduce it to 12 months.

Moreover, prosecutors are also looking to seize 40 BTC (valued at $262,080 as of press time), $292, 264, and 25 gold bars which were confiscated by law enforcement officers last March.

According to court documents, the prosecutor’s office accuses the 50-year-old of fueling “a black-market financial system in the Central District of California that purposely and deliberately existed outside of the regulated bank industry."

Tetley’s sentencing was postponed by prosecutors on Monday, June 11, while the new schedule remains unknown. Bitcoin Maven’s criminal activity is reported to be the first ever case recorded in Southern California, although other crypto traders ran afoul of authorities in other regions of the U.S. last year.

In May 2017, father-and-son duo Randall and Michael Lord pleaded guilty to operating an unlicensed money transferring business. The jail sentence for them was 46 months and 106 months, respectively, with Michael Lord pleading guilty to his involvement in the narcotics trade.

Another incident involving localbitcoins.com last year saw Bradley Anthony Stetkiw arrested for the same crime that the Lords were charged. Stetkiw operated between 2013 and 2015, during which time he sold $150,000 worth of BTC. Of that amount, $56,000 changed hands with the involvement of undercover operatives.