Stefan Qin, the founder of two New York-based crypto hedge funds (venture funds), was sentenced by a US court to 7.5 years in prison and three years on probation.
The court also ordered Qin to lose $55 million (the term fortfeit was used in the decision). The Justice Department said in a statement that Qin was “in the making of a scheme to steal assets” using hedge funds and defrauded investments.
Qin, a 24-year-old Australian citizen, is the founder of the Virgil Sigma Fund and QQR Multistrategy Fund, which allegedly has investments of over $100 million. Qin was convicted of committing a number of securities fraud on February 4, following a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in December last year.
According to the Ministry of Justice, Qin was sentenced to 90 months in prison on Wednesday.
“It was found that he owned and controlled two cryptocurrency mutual funds between 2017 and 2020. Until recently, the Department was under Qin’s control of investments totaling over $90 million, invested by multiple investors, many of whom were US citizens, through the Virgil Sigma Fund.”
“Qin began plotting to steal and defraud investors’ assets through the Virgil Sigma Fund he founded in 2017. Instead of the capital invested in Virgil Sigma being used in arbitrage trading, Qin embezzled the investments and used those investments outside of the arbitrage trading strategy.”
At age 24, Win was also sentenced to three probation and ordered to forfeit $54,793,532.