Crypto influencer was jailed on a $3.5 million crypto jacking scheme

The Nebraska man was sentenced to a year and a day for running a massive, illegal “crypto jacking” scheme that scammed two major cloud computing providers out of more than $3.5 million in computing resources. Cryptocurrency.

Charles O. Parks III, 46, also known online as “CP3O,” pleaded guilty to fraud in December 2024 after being charged earlier that year. He initially faced a maximum sentence of 30 years.

The park confiscated $500,000 and purchased the Mercedes-Benz luxury car with proceeds from the plan. The compensation will be decided later.

“We’re a great place to go,” said Christopher G. Leia, assistant director of the FBI’s New York Field office.

“Parks was shining across social media platforms, but he failed to mention that his success was rooted in deception and theft,” Raia added.

What is crypto jacking?

Crypto jacking is the fraudulent use of other parties’ computing resources, such as servers and cloud infrastructure, to mine cryptocurrency. Prosecutors said between January and August 2021, Parks had created fake companies and accounts to trick cloud providers into granting high levels of computing power, and exploiting them to mine. Ethereum, litecoin and Monero.

Parks used email addresses linked to shell entities such as “heavy LLC” and “CP3O LLC” to acquire and maintain accounts at cloud computing companies.

He misled the providers with the claim that they were building a large online education platform that serves thousands of students while actually running mining scripts. He continued to deflect inquiries when faced with unusual data usage and unpaid bills.

The illegally mined cryptocurrencies were then washed through exchanges, NFT markets and traditional banks. Parks spent the proceeds converted to luxury purchases such as gems, hotels and travel, growing online personas as a crypto influencer.

His current X, Facebook and Instagram accounts described him as “professional, media. technology. strategy. consultant.” Just as he boasted about his profits.

In a 2022 YouTube video, he boasted that he wrote “a truly lovely cryptography script” in 10 days.