U.S. CFTC Can’t Find $140 Million Crypto Ponzi Scammer
The United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fails to find Benjamin Reynolds. The man allegedly controlling a $140 million cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme.
On January 6 financial news outlet FinanceFeed published a report stating that CFTC filed a motion with the New York Southern District Court. The service of process was authorized by publication in The Daily Telegraph and a 60-days time limit was set for the service to be effected on Reynolds and his firm Control-Finance.
A large Bitcoin Ponzi scheme scam
In the middle of June the CFTC brought action against Control-Finance allegedly being a Bitcoin (BTC) crypto Ponzi scheme worth $147 million. The CFTC filed against the cryptocurrency organization and its director with the court mentioned above for defrauding at least 22,858 Bitcoin from more than 1,000 customers.
In a memorandum accompanying the motion the CFTC indicates that it tried to serve Reynolds, with its process server arriving to his ”service address” listed in Control-Finance’s documents. Upon arriving there the server found that the address did not exist.
The CFTC also tried to contact Reynolds by the only email associated with him and his firm, but upon sending the email they got an error message stating that the email can not be delivered. Some affected crypto investors informed the regulator that the Ulsan District Prosecutor’s Office in South Korea is also investigating the matter, but had no success in contacting Reynolds as well.
Cryptocurrency scams
Scammers have long been thriving on hype around cryptocurrencies, luring and defrauding optimistic investors. CryptoTheNews has recently shared a story of BitClub Ponzi scheme, which led to the shutdown of large Bitcoin mining facility CryptoWatt.