Tech
Founder of cryptocurrency firm USI Tech charged with fraud – Digital Transformation News
The German founder of USI Tech, a cryptocurrency mining company and digital asset trading platform, has been charged by federal prosecutors in New York with defrauding investors of approximately $150 million in an illegal multi-level marketing scheme.
Horst Jicha, 64, faces securities fraud, money money laundering, wire fraud and other charges, authorities said Friday. After promising investors a return of up to 140%, he closed USI’s online platform and transferred a large part of it Bitcoin and Ether on accounts he controlled, according to an indictment. He was arrested Dec. 23 while trying to vacation in Miami, prosecutors said. Jicha, who has lived in Brazil and Spain, said in 2017 that USI was the world’s first automated Bitcoin trading platform and that it made cryptocurrency investing more accessible to retail investors. He has been aggressively raising money from US investors marketing camps in places like New York and Las Vegas, according to the indictment. After authorities began investigating, Jicha shut down the platform in March 2018, blocking withdrawals of about $150 million in investor-owned crypto assets that remain unaccounted for, prosecutors said.
“The platform was just a front and when questions arose, Jicha stole millions of his investors’ money and fled the country,” James Smith, head of the FBI’s New York office, said in a statement Friday. “Although the defendant did not return to the United States for half a decade, my office and the FBI worked to ensure that when he did, he would be brought to justice,” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said , whose office is following the case. .
Jicha was arraigned Friday before a U.S. magistrate in Brooklyn, where he pleaded not guilty. He was released on $5 million bail. “It is always difficult when investors suffer losses at the hands of certain bad actors,” Jicha lawyers Marissel Descalzo and David Tarras said in a statement. “We look forward to zealously defending the charges against Mr. Jicha and bringing to light the facts of his involvement with USI Tech, in the hope that bad actors will be brought to justice.”
The most serious charges Jicha faces carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. The case is US v. Jicha, 23-CR-342, United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn).