A trader at a Chicago firm has been charged with fraud after he allegedly misappropriated $2 million worth of bitcoin and litecoin and lied about it to his employers.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Northern District of Illinois, the trader, Joseph Kim, was yesterday charged with wire fraud for misappropriating at the funds last autumn. Prosecutors say that he took "at least $2 million of the firm's bitcoin and litecoin."

Kim had worked as an assistant trader for Chicago-based trading firm Consolidated Trading LLC, which had recently started cryptocurrency trading.

The U.S. Attorney's Office stated:

"According to the complaint, from September through November 2017, Kim transferred more than $2 million of the trading firm's Bitcoin and Litecoin to personal accounts to cover his own trading losses, which had been incurred while trading cryptocurrency futures on foreign exchanges. In order to conceal the transfers, Kim lied to the firm's management about the location of the company's cryptocurrency and his trading of the company's cryptocurrency, the complaint states."

The true nature of the thefts became apparent in November, the office added. Kim is scheduled to make an initial court appearance on Feb. 16, before U.S. Magistrate Judge Daniel G. Martin in Chicago.

Gavel image via Shutterstock

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