Three of the perpetrators behind the AirBit Club cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme now face prison time and forfeiture of millions in illegally acquired assets.
AirBit Club is an international fraud and money laundering organization that deceived investors by posing as a crypto mining and trading company.
District Judge George B. Daniels sentenced Scott Hughes, Cecilia Millan and Karina Chairez on Tuesday for their roles in the scheme, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
The development comes after AirBit co-founders Pablo Renato Rodriguez and Gutemberg Dos Santos were sentenced to 12 years in prison on September 26.
US Attorney Damian Williams explains:
“Rodriguez, Dos Santos, Hughes, Millan and Chairez traveled across the United States and around the world to places in Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe, staging lavish exhibits and small community presentations to convince victims to AirBit Club memberships to purchase. In furtherance of the AirBit Club program, victims were fraudulently induced to purchase memberships in cash, including in the Southern District of New York.
Hughes, a lawyer who previously represented AirBit’s founders in another investment scheme known as Vizinova, and who laundered approximately $18 million of AirBit’s proceeds, was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Millan, who served as a promoter of AirBit, was ordered to spend five years behind bars. Chairez, also a senior promoter of the scheme, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison.
The defendants were also collectively ordered to forfeit the proceeds of the scheme, including US currency, Bitcoin (BTC) and real estate worth approximately $100 million.
Damian says,
“At the top levels of the promoters, Millan and Chairez have for years aggressively solicited investments from hard-working and inexperienced investors and misled them to line their own pockets. Hughes abused his position as an attorney to launder millions in AirBit Club fraud proceeds and give AirBit Club the false appearance of legality. Pyramid schemes like AirBit Club would not be possible without facilitators like Hughes, Millan and Chairez.”
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