Crypto Scam With Steven Seagal Tricked $ 11 Million Investors

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Would you trust a crypto fund backed by martial arts star Steven Seagal? Well, it looks like almost 500 investors did it and got $ 11 million stolen from them.

The story, unfortunately like many others, unfolds like this: in 2017, Start Options, an online investment platform that provided mining, trading and trading services for digital cryptocurrency assets, started looking for investors, according to MarketWatch.

This platform was run by none other than Kristijan Krstic under the pseudonym Felix Logan. He used this alias because he had previously been accused of running Ponzi schemes in Australia and Canada. Meanwhile, John DeMarr, a 55-year-old California private investigator, has been the leader of the scam.

The platform claimed it operates giant crypto-mining farms in China – similar in size to the recently destroyed illegal crypto-mining farm in Ukraine – and could generate between 25 and 200 percent returns in two months. Investors have also been provided with false statements showing that their money is increasing.

When investors started noticing something was wrong and asking for their refund, they were told their funds were transferred to the initial offering of a new cryptocurrency known as Bitcoiin2Gen (or B2G ) which would offer 8,000 times the return. This is the company that Steven Seagal promoted.

Needless to say, this was all a fraud. There were no crypto mining farms in China and no new cryptocurrency.

How it came to be

In March 2018, Logan (Krstic) and Seagal announced that they were leaving the company with the complete demise of Krstic with around $ 7 million in accounts he controlled.

DeMarr then made further false claims that the company was acquired by Russian venture capital funds. Later, in even stranger news, the company claimed that DeMarr was assaulted in Montenegro and disappeared, thus ending this saga of fraud. He turned out to be keeping a low profile in his home in California, according to MarketWatch.

Now the US Department of Justice says DeMarr faces up to five years in prison, and a larger indictment against Krstic and 15 other defendants has been filed.

Seagal also faces charges for failing to disclose that he was being paid to be the company’s spokesperson, according to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Krstic’s fate remains unknown, although the SEC believes he is in custody in Serbia.

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