Roughly 800 victims of the infamous BitConnect scheme will soon see a portion of $17 million in restitutions per a ruling in a court in California. Per the US District Court for the Southern District of California ruling on Thursday, BitConnect was a purported crypto lending platform that touted proprietary technology including the “Bitconnect Trading Bot” and “Volatility Software” that claimed it would net investors guaranteed returns. “In truth, however, BitConnect operated a textbook Ponzi scheme by paying earlier BitConnect investors with money from later investors,” reads the U.S. Department of Justice’s press release. Glenn Arcaro, the U.S.-based promoter for BitConnect, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in September 2021 and was sentenced to 38 months in prison a year later. Prior to that, in November 2021, the DOJ announced it would sell $56 million worth of cryptocurrency seized from Arcoro to compensate victims of the fraud. In February 2022, the DOJ then revealed an indictment against the project’s founder Satish Kumbhani—who is still at large—accusing him of obtaining approximately $2.4 billion from investors in a Ponzi scheme.
Read more : Victims of ‘Textbook Ponzi’ BitConnect to Receive $17 Million in Restitution.