Aurora Starchild
Louis Crosby, a 25-year-old groom-to-be, basically just lost his mind over a crypto scam that evaporated his savings. He’d put all his eggs in one crypto basket while preparing for his wedding. But then it turns out he was scammed. In a moment of desperation last November, Crosby tried to rob a shop to recover his losses. He was promptly arrested.
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Crosby, who is from Sunderland, Northern England, went into a shop around 11 PM with an unloaded air pistol. He’d covered his face in a scarf and wore sunglasses, according to Sunderland Echo. Crosby told the staff, “give me the money, I have a gun.”
An employee reportedly stared the gun down and walked straight up to Crosby. He and the store owner apparently managed to knock the gun out of Crosby’s hands, pressed the panic button, and detained him while waiting for the police to arrive.
The crypto scam victim allegedly told the police that “it was a joke.”
Crosby’s attorney, Nicholas Lane, argued that Crosby wasn’t thinking clearly due to the shock of being scammed.
“He had somewhat naively invested his savings he needed for a wedding dowry and for his rent into cryptocurrency and he himself had been scammed,” Lane said. “In clearly a moment when he wasn’t thinking straight, he took up an air pistol, which he had bought off the internet, and committed this offense.”
Presiding Judge Julie Clemitson took pity on Crosby, however. She waived the jail time in lieu of a 12-month curfew and rehabilitation classes.
“You must have been in a state of crisis to have acted in such a desperate manner, with thoughts swinging from taking your own life to committing financial crime to get yourself out of the situation,” Judge Clemitson said.
Louis Crosby was labeled as a crime victim, which is why his sentence was so lenient. While the groom-to-be has a history of mental health problems, he had no criminal record prior to the attempted robbery.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, over 46,000 people have lost over $1 Billion to crypto scams since the start of 2021. The most common crypto scams are generally related to investment, romance, fraudulent businesses, and government imposters.
