In or about 2017, Ackerman and others started a purported cryptocurrency “investment” fund (the “Fund”) and recruited hundreds of individual investors into the Fund. The Fund was an investment club that allowed its members to contribute U.S. dollars, which the investors were told would then be used to invest and trade in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
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Harmon will be sentenced at a date to be determined and faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, a fine of $500,000 or twice the value of the property involved in the transaction, a term of supervised release of not more than three years, and mandatory restitution.
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According to the factual bases for the two guilty pleas and the various charging instruments in this case, the QQAAZZ members, acting in concert with cybercriminals across the world, conspired to launder money stolen from victims of computer fraud in the United States and elsewhere. More than 40 house searches were conducted in Latvia, Bulgaria, the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy, with criminal prosecutions initiated in the United States, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom.
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Cryptocurrency, as generally defined, is a digital representation of value. Because transactions in cryptocurrencies can be difficult to trace and have an inherently pseudoanonymous aspect, taxpayers may be using them to hide taxable income from the IRS.
Read moreDuring the hearing, Karlsson admitted he used the website to invite potential investors to purchase shares of the plan for less than $100 per share, promising an eventual payout of 1.15 kilograms of gold per share, an amount of gold which as of Jan. 2, 2019, was worth more than $45,000.
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