Jul 11, 2025, 11:51 AMThis reporting on a hearing today by Bloomberg made me smile: A man who got 18 months in prison for his part in a scheme to steal $22 million in cryptocurrency saw his sentence increased to 12 years after failing to pay back his victim as he had promised.
"Nicholas Truglia received the stiff new sentence Thursday, after US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein found he had willfully failed to honor his agreement to pay nearly $20.4 million in restitution."
“You paid not a cent, not one cent,” Hellerstein told Truglia, 27, in resentencing him to eight times his original prison term. The judge ordered Truglia, who has already served his original sentence, taken into custody immediately after the hearing."
"During Truglia’s initial sentencing hearing, it emerged that he had $53 million in assets, including crypto, art and jewelry. Gombiner, argued in a court filing that Truglia has “surrendered every valuable asset he has access to,” including all the money in a Wells Fargo & Co. account."
I wrote about Truglia's crime spree back in 2019 and again at his criminal conviction in 2021, citing details that emerged in his trials showing he was a serial thief who stole from his dad and even a dead guy. All the while traveling on chartered jets, wearing bajilion-dollar watches, etc. Good riddance.
A lot of English-speaking cybercriminals in the US have this same idea, that even if they're busted they can always just bury a Trezor full of stolen crypto in the ground somewhere and even if they do go to jail they'll still be rich when they get out. And the feds still have a lot of work to do in terms of clawing these ill-gotten gains back and remunerating victims.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/01/stole-24-million-but-still-cant-keep-a-friend/
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/12/ny-man-pleads-guilty-in-20-million-sim-swap-theft/