Randall Crater – the Founder of the fraudulent cryptocurrency business “My Big Coin” – will spend 100 months in jail.
Federal prosecutors previously insisted his punishment should have been 13 years.
Crater Defrauded Investors With Over $7.5 Million
U.S. District Judge Denise Casper in Boston ruled that Crater should stay in prison for more than eight years for running a cryptocurrency scam called “My Big Coin” between 2014 and 2017. The wrongdoer stole $7.5 million from investors during that period, luring them to invest in a suspicious digital asset backed by gold.
He also lied that his project partnered with the financial services company Mastercard, while the dubious “My Big Coin” sounded similar to the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization – bitcoin. Upon announcing the sentence, Judge Casper said:
“Certainly, cryptocurrency is a newer enterprise, a newer market, a 21st Century market. But the scheme at its core was age-old, and that was a fraud.”
Federal prosecutors urged the authorities to impose a 13-year punishment on Casper, which could serve as a message to other crypto scammers. They also revealed he used stolen investor funds to purchase expensive items for himself, including cars, artwork, jewelry, and antique coins.
The criminal, expected to appeal the sentence, apologized for harming the victims but maintained he never meant to con anyone:
“I did not set out to steal money from anyone. That does not mean I am not remorseful.”
Similar Punishment for Doctor Ilg
The former neonatologist from Spokane, Washington – Ronald Ilg – recently received 96 months in prison for paying over $60,000 worth of bitcoin to Dark Web hitmen.
He instructed them to break his former professional colleague’s hands and kidnap his estranged wife. The criminals also had to inject the woman with heroin so she could drop divorce proceedings with Ilg.
Fortunately for the potential victims, the FBI detected the crime and launched an investigation. The doctor begged a key witness in the case to marry him and promised to pay tuition for her children so he could control her testimony in court.
Judge Nielsen took into account Ilg’s “really egregious, and even evil” actions and ruled the maximum punishment. He further said:
“A doctor’s goal in life is to protect people, keeping people alive – not taking overt steps to do the opposite.”
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