‘Investors beware’: Trio with fake FinTech ran crypto Ponzi scheme out of Florida
— Fbi miami, Hedge fund, 1 million, Criminal case, Trading business, Commodity exchange act, Investors, November 2021, Empiresx ’, Scheme — 1 min read
Joshua Nicholas, Emerson Pires and Flavio Goncalves are accused of running a Ponzi scheme out of Florida. Federal agents say they used some of the investors’ money to lease a Lamborghini, shop at Tiffany & Co., make a payment on a second home. Nicholas pretended to be the manager of a trading business that used finance automation tech, and they purported to run a hedge fund. The fraudsters showed fake screenshots of EmpiresX’s profitable account with a large, well-known electronic trading platform and created a fake website to mislead investors into thinking that EmpiresX was actually trading their funds, according to the SEC. The scheme began to collapse by November 2021, investigators say. The cases against them are in the U.S. Source