FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – A person arrested in Broward County simply earlier than Christmas is accused in federal court docket of being one of the masterminds in the back of a cryptocurrency “Ponzi scheme,” in keeping with an indictment unsealed overdue Tuesday.
Horst Jicha, 64, used to be charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, the use of manipulative or misleading gadgets, strive and conspiracy to devote mail fraud and cash laundering in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, which covers Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Long Island.
It’s now not transparent what Jicha, described in the indictment as a German nationwide who resided in Brazil and Spain, used to be doing in South Florida on the time of his arrest. He used to be booked into the Broward County prison Friday on a U.S. Marshals cling and used to be not indexed in native prison information as of Wednesday morning.
According to the indictment, issued in overdue August, Jicha used to be a founder and the CEO of an organization known as “USI-Tech,” which used to be purportedly included in the United Arab Emirates and claimed to make “cryptocurrency mining and trading accessible to the average retail investor through its online platform.”
The indictment additionally contains unnamed co-conspirators.
USI-Tech, brief for “United Software Intelligence,” used a multi level marketing gross sales technique. Prosecutors allege that in 2017, Jicha and others aggressively promoted the corporate in the U.S., falsely promising 140% returns over 140 days on a 50-euro “BTC package.”
Cryptocurrency news website online CoinCentral described the corporate as a “classic crypto Ponzi.”
Jicha suggested traders to shop for a couple of programs to compound their returns, in keeping with the indictment.
According to prosecutors, the multi level marketing facet of the corporate allowed Jicha to distance himself from any false claims traders can have made as they attempted to marketplace the product to others and keep away from the felony accountability that includes advertising and marketing funding merchandise.
Authorities allege that Jicha confident traders at an tournament at a on line casino in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania that USI-Tech used to be “not a ‘scam’ or a ‘Ponzi scheme’,” claiming he spent “hundreds of hours” and untold quantities of cash to be sure that the whole thing used to be “legal” in the U.S.
Regulators in U.S. states and Canadian provinces started zoning in on USI-Tech in overdue 2017 and early 2018, the indictment states, issuing stop and desist orders towards the corporate, which quickly close down.
Prosecutors stated Jicha despatched an e mail to traders on Jan. 8, 2018, blaming them for the corporate’s closure, however claimed later that month that they may resume advertising and marketing the goods and, in March, pointing out that the corporate would pay off traders thru a “BTC 2.0 Package.”
But traders have been by no means ready to withdraw their cash, in keeping with the indictment, and Jicha started ghosting them. Prosecutors stated $94 million price of Bitcoin and Ether cryptocurrencies would finally end up in an account managed via Jicha.
Federal court docket dockets don’t checklist any upcoming court docket hearings in New York federal court docket as of Wednesday morning.
Read the whole indictment:
Copyright 2023 via – All rights reserved.