Eddy Alexandre has been sentenced to nine years in prison for allegedly running a near $250 million scheme to defraud crypto investors. Alexandre operated a crypto trading company called Emini FX and is accused of defrauding 25,000 individuals.
Eddy Alexandre is Heading to Jail
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams offered his thoughts on the case, stating:
Eddy Alexandre defrauded tens of thousands of ordinary investors of almost a quarter-billion dollars in his cryptocurrency investment scam. Alexandre’s fraud… included fabricating weekly investment returns of at least five percent out of thin air and falsely claiming to use artificial intelligence trading technology that did not even exist. Most egregiously, Alexandre recruited many of his investors by exploiting his position of trust within his church and the Haitian community, even going so far as to enlist members of the church to help recruit Emini FX investors. As today’s sentence demonstrates, cryptocurrency executives who lie and cheat their customers will be held to account for their crimes.
Situations like these have become common in crypto. A similar story occurred last November in the form of FTX, one of the world’s most respected trading platforms at that time.
The exchange first opened its doors for business in 2019. It rose to prominence three years later to become one of the top five digital currency trading platforms in the world. Its founder and chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried was lauded as a genius by many, and his net worth was in the billions towards the end of 2022.
Sadly, this reputation was short-lived as in mid-November of that year, SBF complained of a liquidity crunch on social media. He said he needed fast cash to keep his business in operation, and he eventually turned to his biggest rival Binance about a possible buyout. While things appeared to be moving in that direction, Binance eventually backed away from the deal, claiming the problems FTX was facing were too big for it to handle.
Does Any of This Sound Familiar?
From there, the company filed bankruptcy and SBF resigned. Things would have been bad enough if they had stopped there, but the trash meter kept rising. It was later discovered that SBF had utilized customer funds to invest in luxury Bahamian real estate and pay off loans taken out by his other company Alameda Research. He was arrested and extradited back to the United States. He has entered a not guilty plea and is awaiting trial at his parents’ California home.
Alexandre is believed to have been active between September of 2021 and May of 2022. During that time, he made several false claims, such as that investors would be able to double their money in five months. He also misdirected several funds and used customer money to purchase luxury vehicles for himself.
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