Randall Crater, the person responsible for operating the fraudulent scheme known as “My Big Coin,” was sentenced to one hundred months in prison and ordered to make restitution payments totaling more than $7.5 million to those who had lost. money as a result of his scheme.
According to a statement released by the United States Department of Justice on January 31, United States District Court Judge Denise Casper for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts handed down Crater’s sentence.
This sentence was handed down to Crater after a federal jury found him guilty on July 21 of four counts of wire fraud, three counts of unauthorized money transactions and one count of operating an unregistered money transfer corporation. All of these charges were related to the same scheme. After adding up all these fees, it became clear that Crater was running an unlicensed money transmission business.
Crater launched My Big Coin in 2013, and although it was never intended to be a payment mechanism for cryptocurrency, the company marketed itself as such. This resulted in potential victims being solicited between the years of 2014 and 2017, and the scam ran through 2017.
According to Crater, the digital currencies that are available for purchase on My Big Coin are fully operational tokens that are backed by gold. In addition, the website has a collaboration with Mastercard to facilitate transactions.
In addition, Crater provided its users with access to a marketplace known as the “My Big Coin Exchange,” which was promoted as a place where users could exchange their cryptocurrencies for fiat currencies such as the US dollar and other currencies.
A substantial percentage of the $7.6 million in financing that Crater and his marketing team were able to generate was used for the acquisition of a residence, many cars, and over a million dollars worth of antiques, art, and jewelry.
