The US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York has charged the founders and executives of the DeFi project SafeMoon with fraud.
The authorities allege that John Karony, Kyle Nagy and Thomas Smith defrauded "millions of dollars" from purchasers of the SFM token.
Subscribe to our Telegram channel to get weekly short digests about events that shape the crypto world
The defendants claimed that the asset was "locked" in liquidity pools. However, when the project's capitalization reached $8 billion, they withdrew "millions of dollars in tokens," which they spent on personal consumption, prosecutors have said.
Prosecutor Breon Peace has said:
"The defendants deliberately misled investors and diverted millions of dollars to fuel their greedy scheme and enrich themselves by purchasing a custom Porsche sports car, other luxury vehicles and real estate."
SafeMoon LLC launched the SFM token in March 2021, according to investigators.