The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday announced that the agency had filed charges against nine individuals for operating two crypto Ponzi schemes, IcomTech and Forcount, also known as Weltsys.
“With these two indictments, this office is sending a message to all cryptocurrency scammers: We are coming for you,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. “Stealing is stealing, even when dressed up in the jargon of cryptocurrency.”
According to the DOJ, IcomTech and Forcount were both purported cryptocurrency mining and trading companies that promised investors profits in exchange for purchasing cryptocurrency-related investment products. Victims invested using cash, checks, wire transfers, and actual cryptocurrency.
In the first indictment, the DOJ accused David Carmona, Marco Ruiz Ochoa, Moses Valdez, Juan Arellano, David Brend, and Gustavo Rodriguez of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for their involvement with IcomTech. The scheme, the agency says, ran from mid-2018 to late 2019.
In the second indictment, the DOJ accused Francisley Da Silva, Juan Tacuri, and Antonia Perez Hernandez of the same for their involvement with Forcount, which ran an alleged Ponzi scheme from mid-2017 to late 2021. Silva and Tacuri, are also charged with conspiracy to commit…
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