Two fraudsters capitalized on the hype around both cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence, advertising an "artificial intelligence automated trading bot" that they promised would earn large returns for their investors. Instead, however, the fraudsters spent the money on themselves, paying for private chartered jet flights, luxury hotel accommodations, private mansion rentals, a personal chef, and private security guards.In addition to pulling off the original scam, the fraudsters also came up with a fake investigative agency called the "Federal Crypto Reserve", where they directed victims who were seeking to recover their losses.The scammers were charged with wire fraud, money laundering, and obstruction of justice, which carry hefty maximum prison terms.

this has all my favorite grifts in one! crypto, AI, and the one where you re-scam the victims of your other scam by pretending to be the cops!

  • locallynonlinear@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    The irony is that moment that there is actually a governmental “Federal Crypto Reserve” agency is the moment you know that civilization has already collapsed and you better have been hoarding potatoes.

    • self@awful.systemsOPEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      that’s the civilization-level collapse the dedicated crypto fuckers have been rooting for, cause their understanding of technology is so faulty that their vision of a collapsed society they can rule over includes working wifi and a global networking apparatus that hasn’t fractured into a million pieces (considered an acceptable failure state for how the internet was originally designed) or failed completely (the more likely case now that all our infrastructure is incredibly centralized)

      • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        If there is a not total civ level collapse which still fractures the internet into different networks which do not communicate, I think crypto will be even more fun, as then you can double spend without needing 51% if you have trade the same coin at the same time on both networks. Not trading anonymously/trusting that you can find the guy who you sold a thing too later to reverse the transaction, would fix that of course but wasn’t that one of the appeals of crypto?

        Say if I was a Russian olicharch with a lot of crypto and Putin decides to close the digital iron curtain, I would dump all my crypto at both markets at the same time the moment the curtain is down. Sure eventually your crypto gets owned by either a russian or a non-russian due to the consensus algo but that is their problem not yours.