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Court Enters $900K Judgment Against Crypto Ponzi Scammer on Behalf of CFTC

Venture Capital Investments Ltd. raised $534,829 from 72 victims, falsely promising to invest funds in bitcoin and other assets.

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The U.S. District Court of Colorado entered a judgment on behalf of the Commodity Futures and Exchange Commission (CFTC) against a Ponzi scammer on claims he and his company raised half a million dollars for cryptocurrency investments, which instead went to personal uses, the CFTC announced Wednesday.

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  • Breonna Clark, otherwise known as Eliot Clark or Alexander Pak, and his firms, Venture Capital Investments Ltd. (VCI) and The Life Group, were charged with raising $534,829 from 72 victims, promising to invest funds in bitcoin, altcoins and foreign currency contracts.
  • Instead, $450,302 in funds went to personal uses, including the purchase of a BMW.
  • The order requires VCI and Clark to pay $450,302 in restitution, a monetary penalty of $450,302 and the CFTC’s costs. Additionally, the defendants are now banned from registering with the CFTC and trading in any CFTC-regulated markets.

Read more: CFTC Sues Alleged Crypto Ponzi Scammer for $500K Theft

Kevin Reynolds

Kevin Reynolds was the editor-in-chief at CoinDesk. Prior to joining the company in mid-2020, Reynolds spent 23 years at Bloomberg, where he won two CEO awards for moving the needle for the entire company and established himself as one of the world's leading experts in real-time financial news. In addition to having done almost every job in the newsroom, Reynolds built, scaled and ran products for every asset class, including First Word, a 250-person global news/analysis service for professional clients, as well as Bloomberg's Speed Desk and the training program that all Bloomberg News hires worldwide are required to take. He also turned around several other operations, including the company's flash headlines desk and was instrumental in the turnaround of Bloomberg's BGOV unit. He shares a patent for a content management system he helped design, is a Certified Scrum Master, and a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. He owns bitcoin, ether, polygon and solana.

Kevin Reynolds