Dundee woman who blamed partying drug users for crypto scam is sentenced

A crook from Dundee who set up numerous bank accounts to manage a crypto scam has been sentenced to 130 hours unpaid work.

Natalie Elliot, found guilty of money laundering to move money obtained in a cruel fraud, was also placed under supervision for 18 months.

Elliot was found guilty after failing to persuade a sheriff partying visitors to her home may have used one of her bank cards to carry out the crime.

Money was transferred into her account before being used to buy cryptocurrency, which disappeared into an untraceable digital wallet.

Dundee Sheriff Court was told that shortly before the fraud took place, Elliot opened multiple accounts with various different banks.

The former cocaine addict said her old home in Dundee was used for parties and unknown drug users regularly attended.

Her bid to blame one of them for pinching bank details from a kitchen drawer failed.

After a joint minute of evidence was agreed, prosecutor Michael Robertson was not required to call any witnesses.

Open door party chaos

It was agreed Elliot opened a Natwest bank account in June 2020 and closed it again that August.

In July 2020, a woman fell victim to a scam in which someone phoned her pretending to be from her bank and £900 was payed by her into Elliot’s Natwest account.

Elliot had also opened a Clearbank account through cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase UK Ltd.

Very quickly, £885 of the money fraudulently obtained was used to buy just over 0.1 Bitcoin which was sent to an unknown and untraceable digital wallet.

The 27-year-old said she had continued to have an open-door policy for parties at her home in Mauchline Place East, Dundee.

Elliot claimed, at the time of the fraud, she was looking to switch bank from TSB, so opened a host of accounts with the likes of Natwest, Monzo and Bank of Scotland.

She said she continued to use the Bank of Scotland account and stuffed all the other paperwork, including bank cards, into a kitchen drawer.

Elliot said it was “more than possible” someone took the Natwest details used in the scam.

She said: “It was very manic. I was a drug addict, I took a lot of cocaine, I had a lot of parties.

“My door was pretty much open to anybody.

“There were lots of people in my house back then, friends of friends of friends and people I didn’t know.

“It was all drug users and drug takers. I was going nine, 10, 11 days not sleeping.”

‘Brutally honest’ evidence

Her solicitor Gary McIlravey said: “In my submission, her evidence was brutally honest.

“Plainly, she is a different person to who she was back then.”

Sheriff John Rafferty convicted Elliot of two contraventions of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

He found that between June and July in 2020, first offender Elliot acquired criminal property, namely £900.

The sheriff also found, over the same period, she concealed or disguised the cash by transferring a quantity of it into cryptocurrency.

Sheriff Rafferty said: “It’s clear to me that these accounts were opened by you and used by you for the commission of the offences.”

Sheriff Rafferty imposed the sentence as a direct alternative to custody.

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