Feds Demand Prison Time For ICO Scammer Connected To Floyd Mayweather

The Feds demand prison time for an ICO scammer named Robert Farkas, the co-founder of Centra Tech, who pleaded guilty to fraud in connection to the ICO so let’s read more in our cryptocurrency news.

The prosecutors and the Feds demand that Centra Tech co-founder Robert Farkas needs to serve “substantial prison time.” Farkas, co-founded Centra Tech with Sohrab Sharma and Raymond Trapani, and he has already pleaded guilty to defrauding investors out of millions of dollars. DJ Khaled and Floyd Mayweather were paid to promote Centra’s fraudulent ICO as they settled charges with the SEC in 2018.

The federal prosecutors are now demanding a “substantial” prison sentence for Farkas who already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud back in the summer. The sentencing submission filed by the government with the US District Court for the Southern District of New York asked for a three-year prison probation time. Farkas established Centra Tech with Sohrab Sharma and Raymond Trapani in 2017 which raised more than $25 million in what the FBI called a fraudulent ICO. The company was promising to develop a kind of debit card called Centra Card which could work wherever Visa and Mastercard cards are accepted. The prosecutors alleged, that Centra Tech never made any partnership with both Visa and Mastercard and that the card was never materialized.

Sharma pleaded guilty to counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and securities fraud as well as conspiracy to commit mail fraud so Trapani pleaded guilty to related charges. Each charge carried a maximum sentence of five years in prison. DJ Khaled and Floyd Mayweather were among the early backers of Centra Tech’s initiative and paid a huge price for it. The SEC alleged that Centra paid Mayweather $100,000 to promote the ICO and paid Khaled $50,000. Both of the celebrities settled charges for failing to disclose the payments.

The prosecutors spent the past two years working to expose the Centra Tech scheme and claimed that the company invented a non-existent CEO named Michael Edwards, who was supposedly a Harvard graduate with extensive banking experience along with other fake team members in order to dupe investors. According to the governments, the company falsely claimed to have money transmitter licenses and other sorts of licenses as well in 38 states. The sentencing date for the three co-founders is not yet known.