Pump & Dump

He said he was fighting the Party. He was fighting for the yacht.

Miles Guo built a movement, a media empire, and a coin. Prosecutors say he built them on the savings of Chinese immigrants who thought they were funding a revolution. On June 29, a federal judge sent him away for thirty years. His fans still came.

Latest
Ponzi / Pyramid

The reserve fund was a sentence. The sentence was the whole machine.

A 47-year-old Nolensville man was indicted this week on eleven federal counts tied to an alleged crypto Ponzi run through Star Credit Holdings. Prosecutors say the pitch included a reserve fund that did not exist and personal loans investors took out in their own names.

Recovery Scams

The money came back from Guernsey. The Cryptoqueen did not.

A bank account in the Channel Islands gave up £8.59 million tied to Ruja Ignatova. Eight years after Asha handed over her savings in a Mumbai hotel ballroom, a sliver of the money is moving toward Germany. The Cryptoqueen is not.

Ponzi / Pyramid

The Windermere house was the receipt. The investors were the down payment.

Federal prosecutors are moving to seize seven homes and eleven vehicles allegedly bought with money from more than 1,000 investors who believed Christopher Delgado was running a crypto liquidity pool. Court filings say almost none of the $328 million ever reached a pool.

Ponzi / Pyramid

The app paid for watching ads. Then one Wednesday in October, it stopped paying anyone.

For four months in 2022, a Telegram-promoted app called Global Media paid Indians small amounts to watch advertisements. Then it disappeared with roughly ₹45.33 crore (about $5.4M USD), and the people running it had Cambodian and Malaysian phone numbers.

Ponzi / Pyramid

The princes of East Cleveland drove a Rolls. The city paid for the gas.

Two brothers from Ohio invented a fake Emirati royal house, a fake hedge fund, and a fake claim on a historic industrial complex. A federal judge in Cleveland just gave them a combined forty-seven years.

The Daily Brief

She called him the love of her life. He called it a job.

Mark Tell · Apr 26

Four Billion Dollars Vanished. The Government Found Forty Million.

Nico Reyes · Apr 26
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See the pitch they're running today.

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