In the courts

Do Kwon, founder of the collapsed Terra/Luna project, has been sentenced to fifteen years in prison — three more than the twelve years sought by prosecutors1a and well above the five requested by his defense.2 Judge Paul Engelmayer said the upward variance reflected the scale of Kwon’s fraud — both monetarily and in its more than one million victims — and Kwon’s decision to flee [I4], remaining at large for months before he was caught in Montenegro attempting to travel to Dubai on a fake passport [I23]. The disparity from fellow crypto fraudster Sam Bankman‑Fried’s 25‑year term likely stems from Kwon’s decision to plead guilty to two wire‑fraud counts, securing a deal in which prosecutors dropped seven other charges, rather than take the case to trial.

Kwon’s Terra project unraveled in May 2022 in a $40 billion crash after the algorithmic stablecoin lost its dollar peg and ultimately went to zero. Investors drawn by supposedly “risk‑free” yields for holding “dollars” learned that Terra (UST) was not a dollar, and that the yields were anything but risk‑free. One victim who spoke at Kwon’s sentencing, a Russian woman living in the country of Georgia, explained that she had been living on the streets after her “$81,000 turned into $13 that I could hold in the palm of my hand.” Other victims described suicides of friends who had invested in Terra, their own thoughts of ending their lives, families breaking up, postponed retirements and schooling, the inability to pay medical bills, and lives ruined.3 I purchased the PACER documents so that anyone can read the victim impact statements for themselves, and highlighted some of them.

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"Samourai Wallet cofounder Keonne Rodriguez received the maximum five-year sentence for conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business last month "

"Paxful [I24], a bitcoin marketplace, pleaded guilty and agreed to pay a $4 million fine following a case alleging it “knowingly enabled its platform to serve as a conduit for criminal activity"

"Carl Rinsch, known for directing the 2013 Keanu Reeves film 47 Ronin, has been convicted on seven criminal charges after taking $11 million from Netflix"

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