Man swaps bitcoins for 2 mn euros in fake notes

The deal sounded murky from the start: in exchange for bitcoin worth two million euros ($2.3 million), the wealthy buyer would hand over the equivalent sum in cash in a luxury hotel on the French riviera.

The seller, a South Korean businessman with a company specialised in the crypto-currency in Singapore, accepted the proposition nevertheless and met the Serbian buyer in July. But once the transaction was completed in a hotel in the city of Nice, the South Korean realised the 500-euro notes he had been handed were crude, photocopied fakes, police sources said.

After the victim filed a criminal complaint at the end of July, the Serbian man was arrested at a top-end hotel in the glitzy town of Cannes in the south of France, apparently living the high-life with a luxury car and a 100,000-euro watch