The US federal government lastly got its metaphorical hands on Do Hyeong Kwon, the 33 -year-old Korean national that developed a financial empire on the cryptocurrency Luna and the “stablecoin” TerraUSD, just to see it all come collapsing down in a wipeout that set you back investors $ 40 billion.
As personal investors submitted suits, and as the federal governments of South Korea and the USA launched fraud investigations, Do Kwon was no place to be located. In 2022, the Oriental government submitted a “red notification” with Interpol, seeking Kwon’s arrest and his go back to Korea. A couple of months later, the Stocks and Exchange Payment charged Kwon with scams in the United States.
On September 17, 2022, Kwon notoriously tweeted, “I am not ‘on the run’ or anything similar”– yet he likewise wouldn’t say where he was. He didn’t help his case when he was detained in March 2023 by the authorities in Montenegro. At an airport terminal. With phony traveling papers. On his means to a nation with no United States extradition arrangement.
After offering a long time in a Montenegro prison, Kwon fought extradition to both Korea and the US. This postponed the procedure by some months, but on December 31, 2024, he was delivered off to US authorities. Today, he showed up before a federal judge in New york city City, where he pled “blameless” to fraudulence.
The United States Justice Division crowed regarding the extradition, with US Chief Law Officer Merrick Garland mentioning that the United States can in some cases get to individuals in surprising methods.
“We protected this extradition in spite of Kwon’s alleged effort to cover his tracks by laundering earnings of his systems and trying to make use of a deceptive passport to take a trip to a country that did not have an extradition treaty with the United States,” Garland claimed in a statement. “This extradition from Montenegro is an instance of the Justice Department’s international partnerships, which allow the pursuit of wrongdoers any place they attempt to hide.”
Five supposed misrepresentations
As for the fees, the US likewise unsealed a large charge versus Kwon today, which you can check out here (PDF) if you want all the gory details.
The standard insurance claim is that Kwon “ripped off investors by wrongly promoting the firm’s blockchain products as decentralized, trustworthy, and effective, and by engaging in market manipulation, inevitably causing more than $ 40 billion in capitalist losses,” according to the United States federal government. This, the government alleges, happened in five crucial means: