DeFI News by Thebittimes.Com

Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky will reportedly see out his 12-year prison sentence in a facility that was once described by Forbes as “Bernie Madoff’s desired retirement home.” The FCI Otisville facility, located in the State of New York, is divided into a minimum security camp and a medium security prison. Judge John Koeltl sentenced Mashinsky for fraud relating to the manipulation of Celsius’s token and recommended that he go to the FCI Otisville Camp. Otisville has previously been home to the likes of Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, Fyre Festival creator, Billy McFarland, and Kenneth I. Starr, the former financial advisor to Al Pacino and Martin Scorsese. The facility was also listed as one of the top 10 cushiest prisons in America by Forbes in 2009, with the outlet noting that it’s often requested by Jewish convicts due to the facility’s access to a rabbi and kosher food. It’s even referenced in the hit show Succession as a “ Jewish prison .” ...

Summary: ⚈ Scammers are pushing fake Grok meme coins by falsely linking them to Elon Musk. ⚈ Fraudsters also impersonated the Tate brothers in a DADDY coin dinner scam. ⚈ Despite rising fraud, some traders profit from volatile meme coin surges. During the first quarter (Q1) of 2025, cryptocurrency traders lost more than $1.7 billion in various digital asset hacks and attacks, per Finbold’s Q1 crypto market report, with an untold amount stolen via fraud and scams. One deception that has been growing increasingly common since the start of the year is the numerous meme coins paying homage to xAI’s Grok artificial intelligence (AI) model.  While there is nothing wrong with basing an altcoin on an AI platform inspired by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the name’s newfound association with billionaire Elon Musk has given rise to a shady marketing practice. The Grok meme coin scam Scammers are flooding the social media platform X, as well as oth...

Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyer , David Mills, calls his client the worst witness ever and emphasizes the FTX founder made the case unwinnable .  In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Mills described the former FTX CEO’s trial as one of his most daunting cases yet. The case began with a personal request, as Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, Bankman-Fried’s parents and long-time acquaintances, sought his expertise. The parents believed in their son’s innocence and needed a capable defender in his corner. Mills, acknowledging the depth of their friendship, agreed to assist without any financial compensation. You might also like: Forbes publishes ‘Under 30 Wall of Shame’ with Sam Bankman-Fried, Caroline Ellison and Martin Shkreli on list Bankman-Fried went off-script Throughout the trial, Mills witnessed Bankman-Fried’s approach in court, which often strayed from the planned defense strategy. Bankman-Fried’s responses under cross-examination, particularly wh...

Former CEO of Systematic Alpha Management LLC Peter Kambolin has pleaded guilty to a “cherry-picking” scheme involving crypto currency futures contracts, marking a first-of-its-kind case. In an unprecedented case, Peter Kambolin, ex-CEO of Systematic Alpha Management LLC (SAM), has admitted guilt in a “cherry-picking” scheme involving crypto currency futures contracts. This practice, known as “cherry-picking”, involves investment managers purposefully allocating lucrative or unprofitable trades to select accounts, allowing them to garner significant profits. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed that Kambolin manipulated the allocation of profits and losses from these futures trades to benefit his personal accounts. CEO Pleads Guilty to Transnational Scheme Involving Foreign Exchange and Cryptocurrency Futures Contractshttps://t.co/aiafUgfRS3 — Criminal Division (@DOJCrimDiv) October 12, 2023 You might also like: Coinbas...

Nearly 10,000 tokens launched on BNB and Ethereum last year are suspected to have been created just to dump on investors, according to Chainalysis. Cryptocurrency investors funneled as much as $4.6 billion into crypto tokens suspected to be part of “pump and dump” schemes in 2022. A Feb. 16 report from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis “analyzed all tokens launched” in 2022 on the BNB and Ethereum blockchains and found just over 9,900 bore characteristics of a "pump and dump" scheme. A pump-and-dump scheme typically involves the creators orchestrating a campaign of misleading statements, hype, and Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) to persuade investors into purchasing tokens while secretly selling their stake in the scheme at inflated prices. Chainalysis estimated investors spent $4.6 billion worth of crypto buying the nearly more than 9,900 different suspected fraudulent token s it identified. The most prolific purported Pump and dump creator Chainalysis identified — who wa...