The cryptocurrency entrepreneur was sentenced to prison for fraud
The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has upheld the fraud conviction of Randall Crater, the founder of the cryptocurrency project My Big Coin, who was sentenced to over eight years in prison. As a result, his plans for a new trial have been rejected.
Crater’s conviction was affirmed on February 23, over a year after being found guilty of three counts of unlawful monetary transactions, four counts of wire fraud and one count of operating an unlicensed money-transfer business. The opinions of appellate Judges Julie Rikelman, Gustavo Gelpí and Jeffrey Howard asserted that Carter didn’t deserve a new trial for partaking in the illegal crypto scheme.
Crater’s lawyers claimed that the court violated his Sixth Amendment rights by not executing subpoenas against witnesses he argued would help his case. However, the judges agreed that no argument by Crater’s legal team “merits reversal.”
“CipherTrace’s investigation had revealed that MBC was not associated with a public blockchain and, therefore, lacked a crucial indicator of operating as a cryptocurrency until June 2017 — long after Crater had marketed MBC as a virtual currency comparable to Bitcoin,” reads the appellate filing.
Crater launched My Big Coin in 2013, falsely marketing the company as a crypto payment service and earning about $7.6 billion in fraudulent gains between 2014 and 2017 from 55 victims. Crater also proclaimed the platform’s tokens were backed by gold and that the company had partnered with Mastercard to provide credit cards to users.
Criminal charges were filed against Crater by the Justice Department in February 2019, resulting in a January 2023 conviction and subsequent sentencing to 100 months in prison. He must pay My Big Coin victims restitution of more than $7.6 million, money prosecutors say he used to buy a house, cars and antiques.
