According to the U.S. Department of Justice, a person in Florida on Thursday scammed a global financial company that swindled investors of nearly $100 million. cryptocurrency He admitted his guilt for his role in the pyramid scheme.
Joshua David Nicholas, 28, has launched a legitimate offer to hope-seeking investors launched in late 2020. bitcoin and was the “chief trader” of EmpiresX, which is promoted as a cryptocurrency trading and investment platform.
The Ponzi scheme of the Company Promising High Returns with Artificial Intelligence in Cryptocurrency
Emerson Sousa Pires and Flavio Mendes Goncalves, founders of Nicholas and EmpiresX, promised investors that their proprietary AI-powered “trading bots” are guaranteed returns of up to 1% per day.
However, according to the SEC, which filed civil fraud charges against the group in June, the bot actually didn’t exist, and the manual trade that Nicholas carried out “resulted in significant losses.”
Customers were instead paid with funds transferred to the system by later investors. The SEC said the rest of the money was used to “rent a Lamborghini, shop at Tiffany & Co., pay for a second home, and more.”
Potential investors were also persuaded by promises that EmpiresX was registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission as a hedge fund, which the SEC said was untrue.
When the system began to crash earlier this year, Pires and Goncalves allegedly stopped customers’ withdrawals and fled to Brazil.
Nicholas pleaded guilty to setting up a system for committing securities fraud, which amounted to a maximum prison sentence of five years.
Pires and Goncalves are both accused of conspiring once for electronic fraud and once for securities fraud. These two could face up to 45 years in prison.
*Not investment advice.
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