A New York man has been convicted of defrauding investors out of $6 million after he sold them a cryptocurrency that he falsely claimed was backed by gold and other valuable assets.
Randall Carter, 51, of East Hampton, told his victims that My Big Coin was backed by $300 million in oil, gold, and fiat currency, and that it enjoyed a partnership with MasterCard.
The illusion was exposed after a joint investigation conducted by the US postal service, the FBI, and the Commodity Futures Trading Association.
“In reality, Coins were not backed by gold or other valuable assets, did not have a partnership with MasterCard, and were not readily transferable,” said the US Department of Justice, announcing the verdict.
Carter “misrepresented the nature and value” of the cryptocurrency during a marketing scam that ran from 2014 to 2017, lying to investors that My Big Coin was fully functioning and backed to the hilt by government paper currency and other forms of digital money.
From his Las Vegas headquarters, he offered them cryptocurrency and virtual payment services that could not possibly live up to his inflated promises, using social media, email, and SMS to promote the big lie that was My Big Coin.
He is known to have spent a fair chunk of his fraudulent gains on antiques, artwork, and jewelry, purchases that ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Convicted of four counts of wire fraud and three counts of money laundering, Carter has a high chance of spending the rest of his life behind bars. He is due to be sentenced at a federal district court on October 27, and each instance of the two infractions carries a maximum jail term of 20 and 10 years respectively.
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