How a Virginia coffee shop became a hub for bitcoin bank fraud
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (WRIC) — Three Virginia residents have been sentenced to prison after they ran a complex credit fraud scheme that centered on a cafe in Northern Virginia.
Adiam Berhane, 50, Tiffany Younger, 51, and Keith Lemons, 56 were convicted of purchasing stolen credit card information using bitcoin, then laundering that money through Caffe Aficionado, a coffee shop in Arlington’s Rosslyn neighborhood.
Berhane hatched the scheme and recruited Younger and Lemons to assist by purchasing expensive luxury goods with cards and returning them for cash and by racking up fraudulent charges on the cafe’s own register.
“Pandora the gold stuff is good the charms are like $300/$400 get like two or one gold bracelet I think those are $800-1000,” Berhane texted to Lemons. “Text me the last four of the ones that worked and tell me which one went for Pandora so I can get some more child.”
Of the transactions at Caffe Aficionado, prosecutors estimated that as much as 98% of them were fraudulent. In one period of just over a year, the money stolen using American Express cards alone totaled $131,000.
A conservative estimate of the total amount stolen was cited by authorities at $1.87 million.
When federal agents seized the contents of Berhane’s penthouse apartment in 2016, prosecutors wrote, they found “Gucci, Saint Laurent, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Fendi, and Prada.”
Ultimately, Berhane was sentenced to 10 years in prison after a jury convicted her on 11 counts, while Lemons and Younger received house arrest and probation, respectively.
