A California court has ordered five individuals involved in the IcomTech “Ponzi scheme” to pay more than $5 million to return stolen funds that were defrauded and misappropriated through a fake Bitcoin trading scheme. The default judgment order found David Carmona, Juan Arellano Parra, Moses Valdez, and David Brend liable for all violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations alleged in the complaint, while Marco A. Ruiz Ochoa was granted a consent order, the CFTC said in a statement on Dec. 11.
The court entered a default judgment on Oct. 21 in a lawsuit filed by the CFTC on May 24, 2023. (Cointelegraph)
The five fraudulently solicited more than $1 million from 190 individuals in the United States and other countries after falsely promising to invest the funds in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies through non-existent mining and trading platforms.
Earlier news, David Brend and Gustavo Rodriguez, the core figures of the cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme Icomtech, were sentenced to 10 and 8 years in prison respectively for defrauding thousands of investors.