NEW YORK (AP) — A 25-year-old Rhode Island man who federal prosecutors say defrauded greater than 170 individuals who poured tens of millions of {dollars} into his cryptocurrency funding enterprise was sentenced in New York Metropolis on Wednesday to greater than three years in jail and ordered to pay greater than $2.8 million in restitution.
Jeremy Spence, of Bristol, Rhode Island, solicited greater than $5 million in investments by way of false representations, together with bogus statements displaying his cryptocurrency buying and selling was very worthwhile when in actual fact it constantly misplaced cash, Damian Williams, U.S. Lawyer for the Southern District of New York, stated in a press release.
As he misplaced cash, Spence used new investor funds to pay different buyers in a Ponzi-like scheme, Williams stated. In whole, Spence distributed about $2 million value of cryptocurrency to buyers utilizing funds beforehand deposited by different buyers, prosecutors stated.
Spence, who beforehand pleaded responsible to a felony fraud cost, was sentenced to 42 months in jail by U.S District Decide Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan.
Spence’s legal professionals, Sylvie Levine and Neil Kelly of the Federal Defenders of New York, stated in court docket paperwork that Spence dedicated the crimes when he was 21 and 22 years outdated, the results of getting “in over his head” with the crypto enterprise.
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“The cash wasn’t stolen or secreted away; it was misplaced in new, unregulated, unstable markets after it was entrusted to a 21-year-old faculty drop-out who ought to by no means have had that a lot accountability within the first place,” they wrote. “In the true world, in conventional markets, no firm would ever have entrusted him with that stage of accountability.”
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