- October 5, 2023
- Posted by: [email protected]
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Significant developments have occurred in the ongoing legal saga involving the cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme known as AirBit Club as the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York moves forward with the sentencing phase for the key individuals involved.
As of October 3, the office of the U.S. attorney for New York has announced the sentencing of three out of the five remaining defendants linked to the AirBit case. These three individuals are Scott Hughes, Cecilia Millan, and Karina Chairez, all of whom had previously pleaded guilty to charges related to money laundering and other offenses earlier in 2023.
Scott Hughes, an attorney allegedly responsible for laundering approximately $18 million in proceeds from the AirBit Club fraud, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison. Cecilia Millan, a high-level promoter of AirBit Club, faces a five-year prison term, while Karina Chairez, another senior-level promoter, has received a sentence of one year and one day behind bars.
In addition to their prison terms, Hughes has been handed three years of supervised release, while Millan and Chairez will serve three years and three months of supervised release, respectively.
The AirBit Club scheme, launched in late 2015, was marketed as a “multi-level marketing club” within the cryptocurrency industry. The defendants utilized persuasive presentations to deceive investors into believing that AirBit Club offered guaranteed daily returns through crypto mining and trading. However, instead of funding the promised crypto operations, which had never actually existed, approximately $100 million of investors’ funds were diverted into the pockets of the scheme’s founders and promoters.
Despite early complaints from some users about withdrawal delays and concealed fees in 2016, the AirBit Club scheme managed to sustain its fraudulent activities until 2020.
U.S. attorney Damian Williams emphasized that Hughes, Millan, and Chairez played pivotal roles in perpetuating the AirBit Club pyramid scheme. He noted that these top-tier promoters had aggressively solicited investments and misled unsuspecting investors for years to enrich themselves.
Williams underlined the significance of the sentences, sending a clear message that individuals involved in cryptocurrency investment schemes, not just those at the apex of the pyramid, would face severe consequences for their actions.
In a related development, AirBit Club co-founder Pablo Rodriguez received a 12-year prison sentence in late September 2023. The final defendant, Dos Santos, another co-founder who pleaded guilty to various charges, including wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, and bank fraud conspiracy, is scheduled to receive his sentence on October 4, 2023.
Dos Santos will be the last among the six defendants associated with the AirBit Club to face sentencing, as Jackie Aguilar, who had pleaded guilty in February 2023, reportedly passed away in May, just weeks before her scheduled sentencing.
