Ponzi scheme Financial News

Two crypto promoters involved in the infamous Forcount Ponzi scheme pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud on Monday in New York.

The Philippines Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the nation’s markets watchdog, has issued an advisory on Wednesday, warning the public against Skyline Crypto and Dry Goods Trading.

New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing crypto trading firm NovaTech, now shuttered digital asset company AWS Mining, and at least two key promoters for reportedly defrauding investors out of $1 billion, court documents from the June 6 lawsuit reveal.

Juan Tacuri, 46, from Florida, a promoter in the global crypto Ponzi scheme known as Forcount pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Ivan Turogin and Sergei Potapenko, co-founders of Bitcoin (BTC) cloud miner HashFlare, have successfully appealed their extradition from Estonia to the United States, where the two face 18 counts of fraud and money laundering. The Tallinn Circuit Court overturned a lower court’s order on Nov. 29, according to a local press report.

Yesterday, an online investigator, known by the X username @BoringSleuth, released allegations against cryptocurrencies Tron and Ethereum, suggesting links to criminal activities and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). 

The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York is progressing with the sentencing procedure for key individuals behind the cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme AirBit Club.

Marco Ruiz Ochoa pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in the Southern District Court of New York on Sept. 27 in relation to Ponzi scheme perpetrated by the IcomTech company. Ochoa was CEO of IcomTech from its founding in 2018 to 2019.

The co-founder of AirBit Club — a cryptocurrency pyramid scheme that swindled investors of over $100 million — has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for his role in a $100 million "pyramid scheme"  that purported to be involved in crypto mining. 

A Tennessee husband and wife are facing charges over “Blessings of God Thru Crypto” — an allegedly fraudulent investment scheme that swindled at least $6 million from over 100 victims in just six months.

SafeMoon, a project previously endorsed by A-list celebrities and social influencers such as Jake Paul and Soulja Boy, announced its liquidity pool (LP) was compromised. Without revealing further details about the attack, SafeMoon confirmed undertaking steps “to resolve the issue as soon as possible.”

Six executives from the $1.5 billion (2 trillion won) South Korean crypto exchange fraud V Global have received prison sentences up to eight years — but three were not detained so they could fight certain charges in court.

The judge overseeing the Celsius bankruptcy case has ordered the examiner and the official committee of Celsius creditors to determine who will head a probe into whether the firm was operating like a Ponzi scheme.

Three associates of fugitive OneCoin founder Ruja Ignatova, known colloquially as the “Cryptoqueen,” have faced a German court over allegations of fraud, money laundering and banking crimes.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged 11 individuals for their alleged role in the creation of a "fraudulent crypto pyramid scheme" platform Forsage. 

The cryptocurrency market has had a rough go this year and the collapse of multiple projects and funds sparked a contagion effect that has affected just about everyone in the space. 

CDOs, which repackaged risky mortgage bonds to make them look safer than they were. “CDOs are nothing but a massive Ponzi scheme,” said the villain of a fictional account of the 2008 meltdown. How much more carnage will it take this time to know that blockchain-based lending is similarly reckless? The idea that one could ditch regulated intermediaries like banks and make far higher returns by lending digital assets was a key attraction of decentralized finance, or DeFi. But that was before the bloodletting began, triggered by the collapse last month of the cryptocurrency pair Terra-Luna. The appeal of changing money into TerraUSD, a stablecoin that promised 1:1 convertibility into dollars, lay in the near-20% yield on TerraUSD deposits. Withdrawal of funds from Anchor Protocol, the main DeFi lending application on the blockchain, crushed the coin, as well as Luna, its sister asset. Soon after, lenders Celsius Network and Babel froze deposits. BlockFi Inc., a Peter Thiel-backed lending platform, said it “fully liquidated or hedged all the associated collateral” of a large client believed to be Singapore-based Three Arrows Capital, a troubled crypto hedge fund. BlockFi is reducing headcount by 20% just as Coinbase Global Inc., the largest US-based digital asset exchange, lays off 18% of its workforce. There’s no end in sight to the crypto winter. Of the $252 billion of investor funds tied up in DeFi protocols last December, less than $75 billion remain.