$17 Million in XRP Allegedly Stolen From Widow of Country Music Legend George Jones

A Tennessee man is facing years behind bars for allegedly stealing millions of dollars worth of XRP from the widow of a famed country music star. 

Kirk West, a Nashville area resident, was arrested on Friday for the alleged theft of approximately $400,000 in cash and a Ledger wallet containing over 5.5 million XRP tokens. The alleged victim of the caper? West’s spurned lover, Nancy Jones—the fourth and final wife of George Jones, the late country music sensation.

So how, exactly, did XRP—the red-hot cryptocurrency created by Ripple’s founders—end up front and center in an alleged decades-spanning southern saga of romance, music, deception, and crime?

According to court filings first reported on by local news station WKRN, Nancy Jones first encountered West, the purported XRP swindler, in the months after her husband, famed country star George Jones, passed away in 2013. West claimed to be interested in buying Jones’ home, and soon after began offering the widow consolation and companionship. 

Kirk West was arrested Friday on criminal theft charges. Courtesy: Franklin Police Department

Per a restraining order Jones would later file against West, the two became romantically involved weeks after Jones allowed West to become her roommate. Jones claimed she wholly funded West’s lifestyle from then on, taking him on vacations and buying him luxury vehicles. 

Jones would later assert that West was not wealthy or successful, as he had initially claimed to be, but was instead “penniless.”

In 2016, West pled guilty to two counts of criminal bank fraud, and was placed under house arrest at Jones’ home. It was during this period that, per Jones, West became a self-proclaimed “crypto expert,” and persuaded the widow to buy up large positions in multiple cryptocurrencies including XRP, Ethereum (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB), and Stellar (XLM), another token created by one of Ripple’s founders. 

Just weeks ago, West allegedly broke into two safes in Jones’ home and stole, among other items, a Ledger wallet containing 5,534,307 XRP tokens. Two days later, Jones booted West out of her house. On Friday, local police arrested West on a criminal theft charge at the Nashville International Airport, the Franklin Police Department confirmed with Decrypt.

Jones and her attorneys were reportedly able to recover most of the allegedly stolen XRP, but have not been able to track down roughly 483,000 of the tokens. 

The timing of the saga is apt, in some ways: XRP has flown to all-time highs in recent weeks, after years of flagging fortunes. Back in 2016, when West and Jones first invested in the cryptocurrency, it was worth roughly half a cent. Earlier this month, the token exploded to $3.65, a new record.

The sum of XRP tokens allegedly held in Nancy Jones’ safe and later stolen by West would have been worth about $35,000 in 2016. At writing, it’s now worth more than $17.4 million.