Nevada Man Pleads Guilty in $722 Million Fraudulent Cryptocurrency Scheme

A Nevada man has admitted his position in laundering funds solicited for the Bitclub Network, a $722 million fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme. He additionally pleaded responsible to tax offenses.

Bitclub Network Investor Pleads Guilty

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) introduced Thursday that Gordon Brad Beckstead, a 57-year-old from Henderson, Nevada, has pleaded responsible in reference to the Bitclub Network fraud. The announcement particulars:

A Nevada man right this moment admitted his position in laundering funds solicited for Bitclub Network, a $722 million fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme.

The DOJ defined that the Bitclub Network was a fraudulent scheme that ran from April 2014 via December 2019. Its creator and operator, Matthew Brent Goettsche, was indicted in December 2019. Silviu Catalin Balaci, Russ Albert Medlin, Jobadiah Sinclair Weeks, and Joseph Frank Abel have been additionally indicted on the identical time in reference to the scheme.

The fraudsters “solicited cash from traders in change for shares of purported cryptocurrency mining swimming pools and rewarded traders for recruiting new traders into the scheme,” the DOJ described.

Beckstead, a Bitclub Network investor and a former CPA, admitted conspiring with Goettsche and others to launder funds earned via the Bitclub Network.

He additionally aided within the preparation of Goettsche’s fraudulent 2017 and 2018 federal tax returns, permitting him to keep away from paying greater than $20 million in federal revenue taxes. According to the DOJ, Beckstead admitted that he knew the returns have been fraudulent in that they didn’t report greater than $60 million in revenue earned via the operation of the Bitclub Network.

Beckstead pleaded responsible to “one rely of conspiracy to commit cash laundering and one rely of aiding within the preparation of a false tax return,” the justice division famous.

The cash laundering cost “carries a most penalty of 20 years in jail and a effective of $500,000, or twice the worth of the property concerned within the transaction, whichever is larger,” the DOJ clarified, including that the tax cost “carries a most penalty of three years in jail and a effective of $100,000.”

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