The court found Joel Ferreira de Souza guilty of using fictitious corporations and surrogate accounts to cleanse the ill-gotten gains from the Braiscompany swindle. This sentence is one of the longest ever dealt in Brazil for financial misconduct.

His offspring, Victor Augusto Veronez de Souza, was given a 15-year jail term for his part in the scheme. Notably, Gesana Rayane Silva, a top broker, was sentenced to 27 years and 10 months, on top of earlier convictions, totaling her jail term to over 40 years, as per regional media sources. However, Mizael Moreira Silva and Clélio Fernando Cabral do Ó were exonerated of money laundering charges due to lack of substantial evidence.

Antônio “Neto” Ais and Fabrícia Farias Campos, the founders of Braiscompany and a married couple, were sentenced in February 2024 to 88 years and 7 months and 61 years and 11 months, respectively. After spending more than a year evading law enforcement, they were finally captured in Argentina. Currently, they are under house arrest awaiting extradition to Brazil.

Braiscompany lured investors with an 8% monthly return on cryptocurrency that was “locked” with the firm for a year. Despite its aggressive client recruitment strategies and claims of prominent crypto affiliations, Braiscompany started defaulting on payments in 2022 and by January 2023, disbursements had almost entirely ceased.

In response, Brazil’s federal law enforcement initiated a nationwide operation in February 2023, dubbed Operation Halving. This led to a raid on the company’s offices and the subsequent flight of its founders. The recent sentencing against de Souza is from a distinct lawsuit focusing on Braiscompany’s money laundering activity.

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Fast forward and the comparative newcomer is one of the highly influential as well as controversial figures in the rabbit hole. As one side are legions of the fans & the deep-pocketed bitcoin backers known as “Lunatics,”. They have turned vision of Kwon and engineering to be stable, digital currency which is easy to spend in the real life and also free from tentacles of the Wall Street. These government regulators are among greatest blockchain projects with almost ten billions of dollars of bitcoin and crypto tied to ecosystem.

Lunatics includes Bitcoin!

Few are the critics, this includes the crypto or bitcoin itself, that say Kwon is destine to fail. Few are also seemingly to be too-good-to-be-true also 20% interest blockchain of Terra for lending & borrowing program to big Ponzi scheme. It may finally collapse under the own weight. Few other warn about Bitcoin albeit devoid of such evidence. This it risks that bring down entire world of the digital assets.

During the year the group led by the Kwon wowed with laser-eye that is crowd through buying $1.5 billion in the Bitcoin. This may also be one among original cryptocurrency and biggest whales. However, it is even the flash point for the booster & naysayers similar. Believers observe the buying as the bold move for bringing Kwon’s vision step near to reality. Here, Skeptics say that it is also much desperate ploy for diverting attention away from the project which is bound to run simply out from money. As per Kwon, the role in entire Bitcoin and crypto industry is quite polarizing.

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Stefan He Qin, an Australian citizen, has been the founder of two popular cryptocurrency hedge funds. However, while promising lucrative returns to investors, he had been knitting a web of meticulously designed crypto fraud. Now the authorities in the US have sentenced Mr Qin to over 7 years in prison for cheating investors worth $54 million.

On Sept. 15, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) confirmed that U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni has issued orders to sentence Qin to 90 months in prison for his crypto fraud. He has been charged for duping investors of $54 million. A significant proportion of those funds came from US investors. 

The Ponzi scheme was executed through two different crypto hedge funds, namely Virgil Sigma and VQR. Qin had founded these two businesses back in 2017 and February 2020 respectively. While it was designed to be an arbitrage business, QIN used the funds for personal expenses and investments.  He also created fraud documents to support his crypto fraud and gain investor confidence. Qin went on to create falsified tax and accounting documents that showed his crypto funds were profitable.

Following investor complaints, he continued lying about the funds. However, after being nabbed by the authorities and following a trial he pleaded guilty to securities fraud. 

In the DoJ’s latest announcement, U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said: “Qin’s brazen and wide-ranging scheme left his beleaguered investors in the lurch for over $54 million, and he has now been handed the appropriately lengthy sentence of over seven years in federal prison.”

The court has also ordered forfeit $54million and probably compensate investors after due investigation. Crypto frauds are not common, as such, it is recommended that investors conduct due diligence before investing in any shoddy funds.

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