{"id":21378,"date":"2025-02-21T12:26:10","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T10:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/safemoon-cto-admits-guilt-in-200-million-crypto-fraud\/"},"modified":"2025-02-21T12:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T10:26:10","slug":"safemoon-cto-admits-guilt-in-200-million-crypto-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/safemoon-cto-admits-guilt-in-200-million-crypto-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"SafeMoon CTO Admits Guilt in $200 Million Crypto Fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thomas Smith, the Chief Technology Officer of the DeFi project SafeMoon, has admitted guilt on two counts in a $200 million cryptocurrency fraud case. This was reported by <a href=\"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/news\/safemoon-cto-submits-gulity-plea-alleged-200-million-crypto-fraud\">Cointelegraph<\/a>, citing a court statement from February 20.<\/p>\n<p>Smith changed his previous testimony and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud.<\/p>\n<p>Each charge carries a potential sentence of up to 20 and 25 years in prison, respectively.<\/p>\n<p>In the 2023 case, the Department of Justice and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also charged SafeMoon CEO John Karony and project creator Kyle Nagy.<\/p>\n<p>According to the investigation, SafeMoon&#8217;s leadership deceived buyers of the SFM token, issued on a public blockchain. Karony, Smith, and Nagy claimed that the asset&#8217;s liquidity was locked, while they had access to the funds.<\/p>\n<p>Subsequently, approximately $200 million belonging to investors was allegedly used by the accused to purchase luxury real estate and cars, according to SEC and prosecutors.<\/p>\n<p>The agencies also noted that SFM&#8217;s market capitalization reached $8 billion but nearly halved on April 20, 2021, when it was revealed that the token&#8217;s liquidity was not locked.<\/p>\n<p>Smith and Karony were arrested in November 2023. Nagy disappeared, and his whereabouts are unknown.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier, on February 20, a former employee of the payroll provider Bybit pleaded guilty to embezzling $5.7 million, mostly in cryptocurrency. She was arrested in April 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thomas Smith, the Chief Technology Officer of the DeFi project SafeMoon, has admitted guilt on two counts in a $200 million cryptocurrency fraud case. This was reported by Cointelegraph, citing a court statement from February 20. Smith changed his previous testimony and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud. Each charge [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"","news_style_id":"","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1162,1246,26],"class_list":["post-21378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-court-cases","tag-scammers","tag-usa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"32","promo_type":"","layout_type":"","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}