{"id":264429,"date":"2025-11-05T14:14:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T14:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/264429\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T14:14:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T14:14:08","slug":"former-nrl-star-trent-merrin-charged-with-140000-crypto-theft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/264429\/","title":{"rendered":"Former NRL star Trent Merrin charged with $140,000 crypto theft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Former Australian rugby league star Trent Merrin has been arrested and charged with allegedly stealing $140,000 worth of cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Detectives took the 36-year-old into custody at his Barrack Point home in the Illawarra on Tuesday, following a year-long investigation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">In November 2024, Orana Mid Western Police began looking into claims a 29-year-old man&#8217;s cryptocurrency account had been accessed without permission.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Officers from the Lake Illawarra Police District and State Crime Command&#8217;s Cybercrime Squad raided Mr Merrin&#8217;s Barrack Point home on Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">They seized several electronic devices, which will be forensically examined.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Mr Merrin was taken to Lake Illawarra Police Station and charged with dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Police will allege the former Dragons and Panthers forward accessed the 29-year-old man&#8217;s account and transferred $140,000 worth of cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Mr Merrin won the 2010 NRL premiership with St George-Illawarra, and also played for Penrith, NSW and Australia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">He retired from rugby league in April 2021.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">He was granted conditional bail to appear before Port Kembla Court on December 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Australian rugby league star Trent Merrin has been arrested and charged with allegedly stealing $140,000 worth of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,1108,6201,51653,354,158,1158,159,85,58040,154803],"class_list":["post-264429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-court","tag-cryptocurrency","tag-dubbo","tag-fraud","tag-nrl","tag-police","tag-rugby-league","tag-sports","tag-theft","tag-trent-merrin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}