US prosecutors estimate one million victims by Terraform-Do Kwon
United States prosecutors have filed criminal charges against former Terraform Labs chief executive officer Do Kwon, revealing a staggering victim count.
Acting US Attorney Daniel Gitner admitted that it is hard to quantify how many people were damaged by the collapse of Terra (LUNA) and its TerraUSD stablecoin. Still, he suggested in a recent court filing that the estimate is a rather high one:
“While it is difficult to precisely quantify the number of Kwon’s victims in light of the sheer number of purchases and sales of Terraform’s cryptocurrencies and the manner of those transactions, […] the Government estimates that the number of victims in this case exceeds hundreds of thousands of individuals and entities, and potentially totals more than one million.”
The detailsProsecutors claim that Kwon built the Terra ecosystem on a foundation of lies and manipulative and deceptive techniques that misled investors into believing it was a reliable and functional financial system. The filing reads:
“Ultimately, investors suffered over $40 billion in losses as a result of Kwon’s fraud.”
Since the number of potential victims is so high, United States prosecutors mentioned that it would be “impracticable” to send notices to each one of them to inform them of their rights. For this reason, prosecutors requested the court to post a public notice of the proceedings online instead.
Kwon faces multiple criminal charges in the United States, where he was extradited from Montenegro last week — and he faces South Korea’s extradition request as well. The former Terra Labs executive’s charges include securities fraud, wire fraud, commodities fraud, money laundering conspiracy and others.
If convicted of all counts, Kwon’s prison sentence could end up being 130 years long. Just last week, Kwon entered a not-guilty plea to U.S. criminal fraud charges following his extradition from Montenegro this week.
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