A 31-year-old Ohio man got nine years in federal prison for running a Bitcoin Ponzi scheme that took in more than $10 million. The fraud didn't stop when the lawsuits started, which is the part federal prosecutors leaned on hardest.
Rathnakishore "Ravi" Giri pitched himself to investors as an experienced crypto trader who could make money trading Bitcoin derivatives, financial contracts whose value tracks Bitcoin's price.
He told investors their original money was safe and the returns would be high. Both of those promises turned out to be false.
Giri raised money from hundreds of investors going back at least to 2019, drawing on trust-based relationships, personal referrals and his pitch about trading skill. Many of the victims lived in and around Columbus, Ohio.
He paid earlier investors with money from newer ones, the standard Ponzi structure, while also pulling money out for personal expenses. When investors asked for their money back, he gave them stalling excuses.
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The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that polices futures and derivatives, filed a civil case against Giri in August 2022, alleging he had run a fraudulent Bitcoin derivatives scheme through several entities.
A federal grand jury followed three months later, indicting him on five counts of wire fraud, with each count carrying a maximum 20-year prison sentence.
Federal authorities say Giri continued taking new investor money even after both actions had begun. That's the detail that turned this from a routine fraud case into a bigger one for the Department of Justice and the CFTC.
The FBI investigated the case, and the Justice Department's Fraud Section handled the prosecution. Giri pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud on October 4, 2024, and will serve three years of supervised release after his prison term.
The fact that Giri kept soliciting funds after both the CFTC case and the indictment is what led federal prosecutors to bring extra scrutiny on the operation, and it shaped the sentence handed down.
The $10 million in this case is small next to the largest crypto fraud cases on record, but prosecutors say hundreds of investors lost money, which is the part that should stick.
Federal agencies have warned for years that no trader can offer high returns while also promising to protect your principal. Guaranteed returns in a swingy asset like Bitcoin are not a feature, they are a warning sign.
Authorities have directed victims of crypto investment fraud to report cases through the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center.
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