An 86-year-old former attorney, David Kagel, has been sentenced to five years of probation for organizing a multimillion-dollar cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors out of nearly $15 million.<\/p>\n
The judgment, filed on October 8 in a Las Vegas federal court, also requires him to pay $14 million in restitution to his victims.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro handed down the sentence following Kagel\u2019s guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to commit commodity fraud in May.<\/p>\n
Court documents reveal<\/a> that the scheme, which ran from December 2017 to June 2022, involved misleading investors into believing they were putting money into a cryptocurrency bot trading program that promised high returns and minimal risk.<\/p>\n According to prosecutors, Kagel and his two accomplices lured victims by falsely claiming their investments would yield profits between 20% and 100% within just 30 days. The trio assured potential investors that their principal amounts would be fully repaid.<\/p>\n Through these fraudulent promises and deceptive schemes, the three collected around $15 million from victim investors for several cryptocurrency trading programs.<\/p>\n However, instead of generating profits, the perpetrators later used new investors\u2019 funds to pay off earlier ones in a typical Ponzi scheme fashion. This left many of the victims facing significant financial losses.<\/p>\n Kagel was instrumental in winning the trust of victims. Leveraging his professional background as a lawyer, he forged letters on his firm\u2019s letterhead to make the scheme appear legitimate.<\/p>\n In 2018, he falsely claimed to own 1,000 bitcoins worth $11 million at the time as a guarantee for the investments. The former attorney also lied about his prior experience with crypto investing, convincing potential backers of the scheme\u2019s credibility.<\/p>\n In 2023, the California Supreme Court revoked his law license after he failed to respond to disciplinary charges related to misappropriating $25,000 in client funds. His license had also been suspended for other violations on two separate occasions, one in 1997 and the other in 2012.<\/p>\n Kagel will serve his probation at a senior living facility in Las Vegas, where he is also receiving hospice care. Should the perpetrator leave the premises, he will be required to wear a monitoring device to ensure compliance with the terms of his sentence.<\/p>\n His co-conspirators, David Saffron and Vincent Mazzota, have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial in a Los Angeles federal court scheduled for April 2025.<\/p>\n The post 86-Year-Old Gets 5 Years Probation for $15M Crypto Ponzi Scheme<\/a> appeared first on CryptoPotato<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An 86-year-old former attorney, David Kagel, has been sentenced to five years of probation for organizing a multimillion-dollar cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors out of nearly $15 million. The judgment, filed on October 8 in a Las Vegas federal court, also requires him to pay $14 million in restitution to his victims. $15M Crypto […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13427"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}False Bitcoin Claims and Forged Documents<\/h2>\n