Ponzi Scheme AirBit Club Co-Founder Sentenced To 12 Years In Prison For Swindling Investors Of $100M

Pablo Renato Rodriguez, the co-founder of AirBit Club has been sentenced to a 12-year prison term.

What Happened: As per a Department of Justice press release on Tuesday, Rodriguez will serve his sentence and then undergo three years of supervised release. This ruling comes seven months after he admitted to wire fraud conspiracy charges in a United States District Court.

The scheme notoriously swindled investors of more than $100 million.

Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said on Wednesday that Rodriguez exploited innocent investors with fabricated promises of legitimate cryptocurrency trading and mining operations.

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Why It Matters: Judge George B. Daniels of the District Court has also mandated Rodriguez to pay a forfeiture of $65 million and surrender various assets. Among these are 3,800 Bitcoins BTC/USD his residence in Irvine, California, $900,000 seized from the property, and approximately $1 million held in escrow for a Gulfstream Jet.

The remaining defendants, Dos Santos, Scott Hughes, Cecilia Millan, and Karina Chairez, have all pleaded guilty and are awaiting their sentencing verdicts. The AirBit Club Ponzi Scheme was investigated and charged by the United States Homeland Security Investigations in August 2020.

Photo by Primakov on Shutterstock

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