WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.–A member of the Palm Beach County School Board has been arrested by the FBI on federal bribery charges related to a bitcoin scheme that took down a New Jersey credit union.
Mike Murgio, 65, a long-time educator, was arrested and accused of being part of the digital currency scheme that included extorting people for money using ransomware. Murgio is charged with bribing the chairman of Helping Other People Excel (HOPE) FCU.
According to the FBI, Murgio bribed the chairman to use the credit union to hide money that had been made illegally via Coin.mx. Murgio’s son had been indicted as part of the scheme in July 2015.
The FBI said that Murgio, his son, Anthony, and another co-conspirator, Yuri Lebedev, sought to take control of the credit union in 2014 as part of a money laundering scheme. Anthony Murgio was the head of Coin.mx, which the FBI said allowed online criminals to illegally exchange bitcoins for cash. Between 2013 and 2015, the company processed $1.8 million in transactions, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York.
As part of the scheme, hackers would obtain bitcoins by using "ransomware” and demanding users pay a ransom in bitcoins to the hackers to remove the restrictions.
HOPE FCU, which was originally chartered to serve low-income people in its market, was liquidated in 2015 by regulators.
Murgio has since announced he will step down from the school board.