Two Canadians have been sentenced to 2 years imprisonment for stealing bitcoin from an Oregon resident through a Twitter scam. The two scammers are Karanjit Singh Khatkar and Jagroop Singh Khatkar, who are both residents of Surrey, British Columbia, Canada.

The announcement was made last Tuesday by the US Department of Justice Attorney’s Office. A probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) revealed that the defendants sought to trick victims into thinking they were discussing customer service matters with reps from HitBTC crypto exchange, says the announcement.

According to the indictment, starting on October 2017, the scammers posed as a HitBTC staff on twitter and lured their victim to hand over vital information about her HitBTC account to them. They further transfer 23.2 BTC from her HitBTC wallet to their wallet on Kraken exchange. According the announcement, the two scammers split the stolen coins and spent them on lavish lifestyle.

The defendants pleaded guilty to the charges on December 16, 2019. They were ordered to settle a charge of $142,349 in prepayment restitution during a change of plea hearing. They were sentenced on March 17 to serve 24 months in federal prison, with 3 years supervised release. A further $42,162 was awarded during the sentencing, bringing the total restitution order to $184,511