CRYPTO

WEEK OF
TRUTH
July 2023

Top
Crypto
Crooks
 T
he cost of crypto scams continues to rise. One report estimates that fraud schemes involving
cryptocurrencies received over $9 billion in 2022 alone.1 Of that amount, $7.8 billion
involved pyramid or Ponzi schemes.2 The FBI also estimates that investment fraud involving
cryptocurrencies rose by nearly 200% from $907 million in 2021 to $2.57 billion in 2022.3 These
schemes often involve the same, now-classic crypto tactics designed to take investors’ money while
enriching the promoters: the sale of unregistered securities; the false promise of huge returns;
phony trading to manipulate prices; and a failure to protect and segregate investor funds, leading to
outright theft. As a result, it’s no wonder that the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission
has described cryptocurrency investments as “rife with fraud, scams, and abuse.”4

Sam Bankman-Fried
FTX

One fraudulent scheme stands above the rest: Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX. Bankman-Fried was a
graduate of MIT and started his career at the quantitative trading giant Jane Street. He founded FTX,
one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, in 2019. FTX allowed investors to buy and sell
cryptocurrencies, and it also created its own token, FTT. In 2021, FTX claimed that it was earning $1
billion in annual revenue by charging fees to customers who wanted to trade cryptocurrencies on its
platform. At one point, FTX was valued at $32 billion.

Prior to founding FTX, Bankman-Fried had started Alameda Research, a firm that traded in
cryptocurrencies. Alameda made money by buying cryptocurrencies in one part of the world and
selling them in another part of the world and pocketing the difference. It used leverage, or borrowed
money, to make its trades. After Bankman-Fried created FTX and FTT, Alameda served as FTT’s
market maker, buying and selling a majority of FTT. Alameda began using its holdings of FTT as
collateral for more loans to facilitate its trading activities.

Because this made Alameda dependent on FTT, and FTT was a token with an uncertain value,
Alameda’s finances would collapse if selling caused the token’s price to crash. So during the first
week of November, 2022, after the market discovered that Alameda was using FTT to make risky

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 loans, investors rushed to withdraw their funds from FTX. FTX faced investor demands for $5 billion in
withdrawals in one day alone. But FTX was unable to fund all of these withdrawal demands. It turned
out that part of the reason was that FTX had lent Alameda billions of dollars of customer assets.

The run on FTX’s deposits combined with FTX’s loans to Alameda left the firm with an $8 billion
shortfall, prompting FTX to file for bankruptcy. After FTX’s collapse, Bankman-Fried said that Alameda
owed FTX about $10 billion. Since FTX had $16 billion in total assets, it had lent more than half of its
customer funds to Alameda. FTX, Alameda, and other affiliates estimated in their bankruptcy filings
that that they had more than 100,000 creditors and faced liabilities of between $10 billion and $50
billion. Bankman-Fried said in a letter to FTX’s remaining employees that that the company had
suffered a $51 billion collapse in collateral. At the time of its bankruptcy, filed on November 11, 2022,
just days after the run, FTX owed customers approximately $8.7 billion.5

In December 2022, the Justice Department charged Bankman-Fried with conspiracy to commit
wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities
fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy to defraud the Federal Election
Commission and commit campaign finance violations. The indictment alleged a wide-ranging scheme
to misappropriate billions of dollars of customer funds deposited with FTX and to mislead investors
and lenders to FTX and Alameda Research. Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas, and his trial
is scheduled to begin on October 2, 2023.6

Now, let’s look at some of the other biggest crooks in the crypto industry.

Do Kwon
Terraform Labs

Prior to forming Terraform, he received a degree in computer science from Stanford University and
worked at Apple and Microsoft. Terraform created the TerraUSD stablecoin, which was designed
to have a constant $1 value, and Luna, a more traditional cryptocurrency with a fluctuating value.
TerraUSD was supposed to maintain its $1 peg through complex algorithms connecting it to Luna. The
idea was that TerraUSD could be redeemed for $1 worth of Luna, and Luna was meant to increase in

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 value over time as the Terraform Labs network became more valuable. TerraUSD grew in popularity
when Kwon offered a 20% interest rate on TerraUSD deposits. The combined value of TerraUSD and
Luna at one point reached over $60 billion.

On May 7, 2022, TerraUSD’s peg began buckling when its price dropped to 99 cents amid a selloff
due to a lack of investor confidence. Terraform dramatically raised the supply of Luna to restore the
peg, which caused Luna’s price to sink. A Bitcoin reserve worth a few billion dollars failed to stem the
spiral, and in a matter of days TerraUSD and Luna were practically worthless. Terra’s implosion shook
digital assets globally and exacerbated a $2 trillion wipeout in crypto market value from a November
2021 peak.

In September 2022, South Korean prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Kwon on financial
charges. Kwon was thought to be in Singapore, but Singapore said he was no longer there. Interpol
then issued a red notice—a request for police worldwide to locate and arrest Kwon, who had been
stripped of his South Korean passport.

On March 23, 2023, Kwon was arrested in Podgorica, Montenegro, as he tried to board a private flight
to Dubai. Montenegro’s interior minister Filip Adzic said on Twitter that “the former cryptocurrency
king” was detained with falsified documents. The Montenegro authorities said that Kwon was
apprehended after using forged Costa Rican passports, and that he appeared to be carrying travel
documents from Belgium that also appeared to be falsified.

That same day, a federal indictment charged Kwon with wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities
fraud, and conspiracy to defraud and engage in market manipulation. The indictment alleged that
Kwon made false statements about the success of his cryptocurrencies. Specifically, Kwon was
alleged to have deceived investors about aspects of the Terra blockchain, including its technology, the
effectiveness of the algorithm ensuring the stability of TerraUSD, and the extent to which Terraform’s
technology had been adopted by users. The indictment also alleged that Kwon orchestrated a
scheme to manipulate crypto prices. The indictment accused Kwon of conspiring with an unnamed
U.S.-based investment firm to use trading strategies to alter the price of the stablecoin in May 2021.
That month, TerraUSD fell beneath its $1 peg but recovered, unlike the May 2022 deviation from its
peg that led to its collapse. The SEC also filed an enforcement action against Kwon and Terraform
Labs in federal court alleging they orchestrated a multibillion-dollar crypto scam, including fraud and
the sale of unregistered securities.

The meltdown of TerraUSD and Luna affected hundreds of thousands of investors. The crash wiped
away tens of billions of dollars in value overnight and tanked the prices of Bitcoin, Ether, and other
popular cryptocurrencies. Investors in Luna and TerraUSD lost everything, with the collapse estimated
to have cost investors more than $40 billion.7

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 Alex Mashinsky
Celsius

Alex Mashinsky started Celsius in 2017. Celsius was a crypto asset platform that allowed its customers
to earn returns on their crypto assets in the form of weekly payments. The company had the same
basic model as a consumer bank—such as taking deposits and making loans—but it paid far more
on deposits than a federally regulated bank. Indeed, the company promised returns as high as 17%
on users’ crypto deposits. As a result, the company gained popularity by paying these high interest
rates on deposits of crypto. Mashinsky would regularly position Celsius’s offerings as being a safer
and better alternative to those available at banks.

As a result, Celsius’s customer base grew exponentially. Many of its customers were retail investors
rather than large institutions. In less than five years, Celsius grew into one of the biggest cryptocurrency
lenders, with more than $20 billion in assets at its peak.

But Celsius imploded following the collapse of TerraUSD and a downturn in the crypto markets, which
left Celsius with a hole in its balance sheet and unable to meet an influx of customer withdrawals.
Celsius lost $15.8 million from its investments in TerraUSD and its sister token Luna. Celsius also had
lent bankrupt hedge fund Three Arrows $75 million. In addition, Celsius invested customer deposits
in illiquid assets and risky decentralized finance bets that tied up the money for long periods of
time, which meant that when customers withdrew crypto from their accounts Celsius struggled
to liquidate assets to meet those requests. In June 2022, Celsius announced that it was halting
customer withdrawals, at which time hundreds of thousands of Celsius customers—many of whom
were retail investors—still had billions of dollars worth of crypto on the platform, none of which they
could access. In July 2022, Celsius filed for bankruptcy, declared a $1.19 billion deficit, and said it
owed customers $4.7 billion.

On July 13, 2023, Mashinsky was arrested and charged with fraud and attempting to manipulate
cryptocurrencies. The SEC, CFTC, and FTC also filed lawsuits against Mashinsky and Celsius, and
Celsius agreed to pay a $4.7 billion fine in response to the FTC lawsuit. The New York Attorney
General’s Office had previously sued Mashinsky for fraud.

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 The federal indictment alleged that Mashinsky orchestrated a scheme to defraud Celsius’s customers.
The indictment alleged that Mashinsky repeatedly made public misrepresentations regarding core
aspects of Celsius’s business and financial condition in order to induce retail customers to provide
their crypto assets to Celsius and continue to use Celsius’s services. Mashinsky misrepresented,
among other things, the safety of Celsius’s yield-generating activities, Celsius’s profitability, the long-
term sustainability of Celsius’s high reward rates, and the risks associated with depositing crypto
assets with Celsius. The indictment also alleged that Mashinsky misled customers and market
participants regarding the market value and interest in Celsius’s proprietary token CEL. Mashinsky
did so by manipulating the price of CEL, and by artificially inflating CEL’s price Mashinsky was able to
sell his own CEL holdings at a profit.8

Ruja Ignatova
OneCoin

Ruja Ignatova, along with Karl Sebastian Greenwood, founded OneCoin in 2014. Before starting
OneCoin, Ignatova worked as a consultant in Sofia, Bulgaria, for McKinsey & Company. Ignatova had
been born in Bulgaria and studied European law at Oxford University. OneCoin was based in Sofia,
and it marketed a cryptocurrency by the same name.

Ignatova called herself the “Cryptoqueen.” She touted OneCoin as a lucrative rival to Bitcoin. In 2016,
Ignatova said that “In two years, nobody will speak about Bitcoin anymore.”

OneCoin operated as a global multi-level-marketing (MLM) network through which members

received commissions for recruiting others to purchase OneCoin cryptocurrency packages. This
MLM structure influenced rapid growth of the OneCoin member network. According to OneCoin,
over three million people invested in its cryptocurrency packages. Ignatova and Greenwood hosted
webinars and conferences where they urged potential investors to deposit funds in an account that
would enable the purchase of OneCoin packages. Ignatova and her partners promised investors a
fivefold to tenfold return. Between the fourth quarter of 2014 and the fourth quarter of 2016, OneCoin
generated €4.037 billion in sales revenue.

But in 2016, investors had a hard time selling their OneCoins to recoup their original investments.
Word began to spread online that the business was a scam.
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 In October 2017, a federal indictment charged Ignatova with wire fraud, securities fraud, and money
laundering offenses. According to the indictment, OneCoin was actually a multi-billion dollar pyramid
scheme. The indictment alleged that OneCoin represented to investors that OneCoin was “mined”
using computer servers maintained and operated by the company, and the value of OneCoin was
based on market supply and demand. However, OneCoins were not mined using computer resources,
and the value of OneCoins was determined internally and not by market supply and demand. OneCoin
also claimed to have a private blockchain but did not. By March 2015, the indictment alleged that
Ignatova and Greenwood started allocating to OneCoin members coins that did not even exist in
OneCoin’s purported private blockchain.

Federal investigators also alleged that Ignatova knew OneCoin was a pyramid scheme from the
start. According to internal OneCoin emails, the plan was to create a “trashy coin” that would fuse
the frenzy surrounding crypto with multilevel marketing. Ignatova wrote to a co-founder that the plan
was to “take the money and run and blame someone else for this.” Investor losses after the OneCoin
scheme unraveled totaled more than $4 billion.

Two weeks after the October 2017 indictment, Ignatova boarded a plane to Athens and disappeared.
Ignatova was a German citizen, and the FBI believed that she may have traveled to Athens on a
German passport. Ignatova has not been seen since her plane landed in Greece.

Ignatova is now on the FBI’s list of ten most-wanted fugitives. There is a $100,000 reward for
information about her whereabouts. Ignatova is also one of the most-wanted fugitives in Europe.
OneCoin has shut down and its website is no longer active. Federal prosecutors describe OneCoin
as one of the largest international fraud schemes ever perpetrated.9

Satish Kumbhani
BitConnect

Satish Kumbhani founded BitConnect in 2016. BitConnect purported to be a cryptocurrency investment

platform that could generate substantial profits and guaranteed returns by using investors’ money
to trade on the volatility of the cryptocurrency exchange markets. Investors would send bitcoins
to BitConnect to purchase an equivalent value of the BitConnect Coin (BCC), the trading coin on

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 the BitConnect platform, in return for interest payments. BitConnect represented that the interest
payments would be generated by BitConnect’s proprietary Trading Bot. The Trading Bot, according
to BitConnect, generated returns by tracking the volatility of bitcoin versus the U.S. dollar and the
volatility of the U.S. dollar against other major world currencies. BitConnect reached a peak market
capitalization of $3.4 billion.

In February 2022, a federal indictment charged Kumbhani with allegedly orchestrating a global
Ponzi scheme through BitConnect. The indictment alleged that, rather than paying investors interest
payments, BitConnect paid earlier investors with money from later investors. And instead of trading
with investors’ funds, investors’ funds were transferred to digital wallets that Kumbhani and others
controlled. After operating the BitConnect lending program for about a year, Kumbhani abruptly shut
it down and directed his network of promoters to fraudulently manipulate and prop up the price
of BCC to create the false appearance of legitimate market demand. Kumbhani and others also
concealed the location and control of the fraud proceeds obtained from investors by commingling,
cycling, and exchanging the funds through BitConnect’s cluster of cryptocurrency wallets and various
internationally based cryptocurrency exchanges. The indictment alleged that BitConnect defrauded
investors of over $2 billion.

After Kumbhani’s indictment, he fled his native India. The authorities have been unable to locate him.
At this time, he remains at large. Glenn Arcaro, the top North American promoter of BitConnect, was
sentenced to 38 months in prison in September 2022 for his role in the scheme, which defrauded at
least 4,500 people from 95 countries. At the time of Kumbhani’s indictment, the case was believed
to be one of the largest cryptocurrency frauds ever charged.10

These crypto criminals are some of the most well-known scammers, but they are by no means the
only ones. Investors lost $3.5 billion to crypto scammers in 2022 alone.11 These statistics show that
crypto is aptly described as an “ecosystem that is totally corrupt.”12

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 — Notes —
1 TRM Labs, Illicit Crypto Ecosystem Report (June 2023), https://www.trmlabs.com/illicit-crypto-ecosystem-re-
port-2023.
2 Id.
3 Id.; Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internet Crime Complaint Center Releases 2022 Statistics (Mar.
22, 2023), https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/springfield/news/internet-crime-complaint-center-releas-
es-2022-statistics.
4 https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/gensler-aspen-security-forum-2021-08-03
5 Yueqi Yang and Allyson Versprille, FTX Lied to Banks About Commingled Funds, Management Alleges,
Bloomberg (June 26, 2023), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-26/ftx-new-management-recov-
ers-7-billion-in-substantial-progress?sref=mQvUqJZj; Whizy Kim, Sam Bankman-Fried’s arrest is the culmination of
an epic flameout, VOX (Dec. 22, 2022), https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23458837/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-sbf-down-
fall-explained; Niha Masih and Julian Mark, What to know about Sam Bankman-Fried and the FTX crypto exchange
collapse, Wash. Post (Dec. 14, 2022), https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/13/sam-bankman-fried-
ftx-collapse-explained/; Matt Egan and Allison Morrow, FTX founder indicted on eight criminal charges including
fraud and conspiracy, CNN (Dec. 13, 2022), https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/13/business/sam-bankman-fried-charges/
index.html; Matthew Goldstein et al., FTX’s Sister Firm, Alameda Research, Was Central to Collapse, N.Y. Times
(Nov. 30, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/30/business/dealbook/ftx-almeda-research-sam-bankman-fried.
html; Andrew Ross Sorkin et al., Losses Pile Up in FTX Bankruptcy Turmoil, N.Y. Times (Nov. 23, 2022), https://
www.nytimes.com/2022/11/23/business/dealbook/sbf-ftx-bankruptcy-turmoil.html; Alex Hern and Dan Milmo, What
do we know so far about collapse of crypto exchange FTX, The Guardian (Nov. 18, 2022), https://www.theguardian.
com/technology/2022/nov/18/how-did-crypto-firm-ftx-collapse; Patricia Kowsmann et al., FTX’s Digital Coin Was
at Heart of Cyrpto Exchange’s Fall, The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 14, 2022), https://www.wsj.com/articles/ftxs-dig-
ital-coin-was-at-heart-of-crypto-exchanges-fall-11668416718?mod=article_inline; David Yaffe-Bellany, How Sam
Bankman-Fried’s Crypto Empire Collapsed, N.Y. Times (Nov. 14, 2022), https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/tech-
nology/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-crypto-bankruptcy.html; Gregory Zuckerman and Alexander Osipovich, How FTX’s
Sam Bankman-Fried Went From Crypto Golden Boy to Villain, The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 11, 2022), https://www.
wsj.com/articles/how-ftx-sam-bankman-fried-went-from-crypto-golden-boy-to-villain-11668199208?mod=article_in-
line; Vicky Ge Huang et al., FTX Tapped Into Customer Accounts to Fund Risky Bets, Setting Up Its Downfall, The
Wall Street Journal (Nov. 11, 2022), https://www.wsj.com/articles/ftx-tapped-into-customer-accounts-to-fund-risky-
bets-setting-up-its-downfall-11668093732?mod=e2tw.
6 Kara Scannell, Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial to be split up as attorneys challenge some counts, CNN (June 15,
2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/15/investing/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-charges/index.html; U.S. Dep’t of Justice,
United States Attorney Announces Charges Against FTX Founder Samuel Bankman-Fried (Dec. 13, 2022), https://
www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/united-states-attorney-announces-charges-against-ftx-founder-samuel-bankman-fried.
7 Sangmi Cha and Sidhartha Shukla, How Do Kwon Went From Crypto King to Fugitive to Jail: Quick Take,
Wash. Post (June 28, 2023), https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/06/28/how-onetime-crypto-titan-
do-kwon-became-a-fugitive-quicktake/f0ec2778-161d-11ee-9de3-ba1fa29e9bec_story.html; David Yaffe-Bellany
et al., A Crypto Fugitive’s Very Public Life While on the Run, N.Y. Times (Mar. 24, 2023), https://www.nytimes.
com/2023/03/24/business/crypto-do-kwon-terraform-labs.html; David Yaffe-Bellany, Crypto Fugitive Do Kwon is
Charged with Fraud by U.S. Prosecutors, N.Y. Times (Mar. 23, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/23/busi-
ness/do-kwon-arrested-crypto.html; Scott Chipolina et al., US charges crypto fugitive Do Kwon after Montenegro
arrest, Financial Times (Mar. 23, 2023), https://www.ft.com/content/c07bd4c4-f555-49a9-badd-7cf03b5f6e6a;
Alexander Osipovich et al, Do Kwon Arrested in Montenegro as U.S. Charges Crypto Fugitive With Fraud, The
Wall Street Journal (Mar. 23, 2023), https://www.wsj.com/articles/crypto-fugitive-do-kwon-arrested-in-montene-
gro-minister-says-18e58f31; Annabelle Liang, Do Kwon: US regulator charges ‘cryptocrash; boss with fraud, BBC
(Feb. 17, 2023), https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64671745; SEC Press Release, SEC Charges Terraform and
CEO Do Kwon with Defrauding Investors in Crypto Schemes (Feb. 16, 2023), https://www.sec.gov/news/press-re-
lease/2023-32.

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 — Notes —
8 U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Celsius Founder and Former Chief Revenue Officer Charged in Connection with Mul-
tibillion-Dollar Fraud and Market Manipulation Schemes (July 13, 2023), https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/
celsius-founder-and-former-chief-revenue-officer-charged-connection-multibillion; Ava Benny-Morrison and Allyson
Versprille, Ex-Celsius CEO Mashinsky Charged in Latest DOJ Crypto Case, Bloomberg (July 13, 2023), https://www.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-13/sec-files-lawsuit-against-celsius-network-alex-mashinsky?sref=mQvUqJZj;
Vicky Ge Huang and Soma Biswas, Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky Steps Down, The Wall Street Journal (Sept. 27,
2022), https://www.wsj.com/articles/celsius-ceo-alex-mashinsky-steps-down-11664288431.
9 Faith Karimi, This “Cryptoqueen” scammed investors out of $4 billion, the FBI says. Then she boarded
a plane and disappeared, CNN (Jan. 22, 2023), https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/22/business/ruja-ignatova-cryp-
toqueen-fbi-most-wanted-cec/index.html; U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Co-Founder of Multi-Billion-Dollar Crypto-
currency Pyramid Scheme “OneCoin” Pleads Guilty (Dec. 16, 2022), https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/
co-founder-multi-billion-dollar-cryptocurrency-pyramid-scheme-onecoin-pleads-guilty; Maria Luisa Paul, Former
“Cryptoqueen” is now one of 10 most-wanted fugitives, Wash. Post (July 1, 2022), https://www.washingtonpost.
com/nation/2022/07/01/cryptoqueen-ruja-ignatova-fugitive/; Dan Milmo, FBI offers $100,000 reward for help find-
ing OneCoin “Cryptoqueen,” The Guardian (July 1, 2022), https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/01/
fbi-offers-100000-reward-for-help-finding-onecoin-cryptoqueen-ruja-ignatova#; Hannah J. Davies, The Missing
Cryptoqueen: The hunt for a multi-billion-dollar scam artist, The Guardian (Nov. 4, 2019), https://www.theguardian.
com/tv-and-radio/2019/nov/04/the-missing-cryptoqueen-the-hunt-for-a-multi-billion-dollar-scam-artist; U.S. Dep’t of
Justice, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Announces Charges Against Leaders of “OneCoin,” A Multibillion-Dollar Pyramid
Scheme Involving the Sale of a Fraudulent Cryptocurrency (Mar. 8, 2019), https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/man-
hattan-us-attorney-announces-charges-against-leaders-onecoin-multibillion-dollar.
10 David Voreacos, BitConnect Promoter Gets 38 Months in $2.4 Billion Ponzi Scam, Bloomberg (Sept. 16,
2022), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-17/bitconnect-promoter-gets-38-months-in-2-4-billion-
ponzi-scam?sref=mQvUqJZj; David Voreacos, Millennial crypto mogual disappeared from India after indictment
on $2.4 billion Ponzi scheme, SEC says, Fortune (Mar. 1, 2022), https://fortune.com/2022/03/01/bitconnect-found-
er-satish-kumbhani-disappeared-india-sec-lawsuit/; Ramishah Maruf, BitConnect founder charged with orchestrating
$2 billion Ponzi scheme, CNN (Feb. 27, 2022), https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/27/business/bitconnect-ponzi-scheme-
satish-kumbhani/index.html; U.S. Dep’t of Justice, BitConnect Founder Indicted in Global $2.4 Billion Cryptocur-
rency Scheme (Feb. 25, 2022); https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/bitconnect-founder-indicted-global-24-billion-cryp-
tocurrency-scheme; Complaint, SEC v. BitConnect, No. 21-cv-07349 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 1, 2021), https://www.sec.
gov/litigation/complaints/2021/comp-pr2021-172.pdf; BDO Canada, Fraudsters mark global Ponzi scheme behind
deceptive cryptocurrency platform BitConnect, https://www.bdo.ca/insights/cryptocurrency-execs-charged-for-2-4-bil-
lion-ponzi-scheme.
11 Crypto Investors Lost $3.5 Billion to Scammers in 2022, Privacy Affairs Study reveals, Yahoo (Dec. 5, 2022),
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/crypto-investors-lost-3-5-100000809.html.
12 Jenni Reid, Economist Nouriel Roubini slams crypto ‘carnival barkers’ and Binance CEO as a ‘walking time
bomb’ after FTX disaster, CNBC (Nov. 16, 2022), https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/16/crypto-an-ecosystem-that-is-to-
tally-corrupt-says-nouriel-roubini-.html.

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