The former CEO of Mining Digital has been charged with embezzling more than $1.5 million

Following an investigation by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), former CEO of ACCE Australia, Grant Colthup, has been charged with fraud.

Appearing at the Magistrates' Court in Ipswich, Queensland, Coltup was charged with defrauding a customer of $1.47 million (A$2.2 million).

$1.5M Bitcoin payment is missing

From May 2019 to September 2022, ACCE operated a digital asset exchange platform that provided crypto trading services to clients under the “Mine Digital” brand.

According to the press release, the incident began in July 2022, when a customer paid the company $1.5 million to buy bitcoins, but did not receive the cryptocurrency.

ASIC alleges that instead of delivering bitcoins, ColtPup used its customers' money to cover ACCA's financial debt and buy cryptocurrency for other customers.

The charge under Section 408C of the Queensland Criminal Code 1899 carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The case has been adjourned to December 16, 2024 and will be prosecuted by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Legal problems of ACCE

This legal development is one of many controversies that have affected ACCE and My Digital. The company collapsed in September 2022, with creditors scrambling to recover nearly $16 million in debt.

The collapse of the Queensland-based exchange was handed over to PKF manager Brad Tonks in September 2022, just weeks before the collapse of popular US exchange FTX.

At the time, the Australian Financial Review, a local publication, reported that its investigations into Tonks' company had revealed troubling financial discrepancies, including limited records, an irregular balance sheet and only $20,000 in assets.

A PKF partner said in a statement to creditors that significant digital assets appear to have been transferred from ACAC before the administration, with insufficient records to trace the transactions.

“Customers' investments into digital assets do not appear to be recorded on the firm's balance sheet,” Tonks reported.

In addition, the failure occurred in It followed a legal dispute with a self-managed pension fund over a separate $1.6 million investment loss in 2020. He said the fund did not do enough to prevent the social engineering scam known as “500 Investments”.

Although the exchange defended itself in this case, the incident contributed to the growing number of legal challenges.

In the year In December 2022, PKF was appointed ACCE's official executor, and Tonks launched legal action against Colthup to recover $16 million owed to creditors.