Atlanta Film Producer Found Guilty in $2.5 Million Crypto Fraud
Famous film producer Atlanta has been found guilty of wire fraud and money laundering charges for promoting fake crypto investment schemes. These schemes allegedly defrauded around $2.5 million in investment funds.
US Department of Justice (DOJ) tired in the official indictment that a 48-year-old crook named Ryan Felton transferred $2.4 million in investment income from Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and trading markets into his account.
“The defendants used 21st century technology to commit an age-old fraud: lying to investors to steal their money and finance their own lavish lifestyles,” said United States Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan. “Felton’s conviction should serve as a warning to anyone trying to exploit new technologies to victimize others.”
According to US Attorney Buchanan and other official documents presented in court, Felton launched an initial coin offering (ICO) for a new entertainment streaming platform called FliK in 2017.
To lend credibility to his claim and lure investors, he lied to people that a famous Atlanta rapper and actor was a co-owner of FLiK. He also falsely represented that the US military would distribute the streaming platform to service members.
Also read: Third founder of BitMEX pleaded guilty by the US Department of Justice
However, whatever promises he made before the ICO closing were just lies. Shortly after the closing of the ICO, Felton dumped over 40 million FLiK tokens in trading markets, dropping the market capitalization.
Apart from this, instead of using these investors’ funds to develop a streaming platform, Felton spent this money on his extravagant lifestyle, including the cash purchase of a $1.5 million home, a red 2007 Ferrari 599 GTB Fioran Coupe for $180,000 dollars, a new $58,250. Chevy Tahoe, and approximately $30,000 in diamond jewelry.
After getting a taste of the first fake crypto product, Felton promoted another ICO for the so-called crypto exchange, CoinSpark. These times he tricked investors through the false promise that he would share 25% profits of the crypto exchange with Spark coin investors.
He also misrepresented to investors about the firm’s audit that a global accounting firm would audit CoinSpark’s financials on a quarterly basis. In reality, he never contacted that accounting firm.
To create a false hype about CoinSpark, he appeared on various social media accounts under a fake name.
The official document stated that “Atlanta, Georgia, pleaded guilty to twelve counts of wire fraud, ten counts of money laundering and two counts of securities fraud on the fourth day of the jury trial.”
Sentencing on these charges against Felton will be scheduled at a later date before US District Court Judge JP Boulee.
