British sprinter Chijindu Ujah was arrested as part of an investigation into cryptocurrency fraud, a serious crime investigation body said, with the former world champion being released on bail.<\/p>\n
Britain\u2019s Regional Organised Crime Unit Network (ROCU) said Ujah was one of 10 people arrested and one of seven bailed by magistrates to attend a court hearing on May 28 after they were all charged with conspiracy to defraud.<\/p>\n
Ujah did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters. Governing body British Athletics declined to comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is alleged the suspects were part of an organised crime group linked to a scam which involved phone calls to multiple victims, from people purporting to be police officers and cryptocurrency companies,\u201d ROCU said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cVictims are reported to have been tricked into sharing important security details, including seed phrases, before discovering funds stored in their crypto wallets had been stolen.\u201d<\/p>\n
ROCU said one of the victims is alleged to have lost more than 300 000 pounds ($410,000).<\/p>\n
Ujah was a 4\u00d7100 metres relay world champion in 2017 and European relay champion in 2016 and 2018.<\/p>\n
He was banned for 22 months for a doping violation which led to Britain\u2019s relay team at the Tokyo Olympics being stripped of their silver medal.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":34109,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-34108","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Ujah was a 4\u00d7100 metres relay world champion in 2017.","published_date":"","news_description":"Ujah was a 4\u00d7100 metres relay world champion in 2017","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34110,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34108\/revisions\/34110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=34108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}