Two QAnon-affiliated conspiracy theorist influencers allegedly caused their followers millions of dollars in losses by running a cryptocurrency pump-and-dump scheme. The pair reportedly persuaded their thousands of followers to invest in a portfolio of cryptos, presenting a misleading mix of conspiratorial and genuine content along with claims about institutions backing the tokens to generate hype and raise the price of the portfolio. The allegations are included in an investigation by Logically, a group of data scientists and developers. It reported the two influencers running the Telegram channels “WhipLash347” and the “Quantum Stellar Initiative” (QSI) coordinated to promote lists of Stellar (XLM) altcoins which have been marked as fraudulent by the Stellar network. WhipLash347 is a Tel...
A crypto trader who defrauded over 170 people was sentenced to 42 months in prison on May 11 for operating a series of cryptocurrency funds claiming to make big returns but in reality were losing money and instead operated as a Ponzi scheme. The DOJ said that 25 year old Jeremy Spence had solicited millions through false representations, “including that Spence’s crypto trading had been extremely profitable when, in fact, Spence’s trading had been consistently unprofitable.” Spence, who operated the social media channels for a crypto investment scheme called “Coin Signals” was handed the decision by United Stated District Judge Lewis Kaplan for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Spence was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to p...