Convicted – Earlybirds Invest https://earlybirdsinvest.com Latest Crypto News Mon, 02 Jun 2025 15:37:39 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.7 https://i0.wp.com/earlybirdsinvest.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/cropped-New-Project-2024-12-17T235703.455.png?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 Convicted – Earlybirds Invest https://earlybirdsinvest.com 32 32 240146708 Czech Minister Steps Down, Opposition Calls for Govt to Resign Over $46M in BTC ‘Donated’ from Convicted Criminal https://earlybirdsinvest.com/czech-minister-steps-down-opposition-calls-for-govt-to-resign-over-46m-in-btc-donated-from-convicted-criminal/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/czech-minister-steps-down-opposition-calls-for-govt-to-resign-over-46m-in-btc-donated-from-convicted-criminal/#respond Mon, 02 Jun 2025 15:37:39 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/czech-minister-steps-down-opposition-calls-for-govt-to-resign-over-46m-in-btc-donated-from-convicted-criminal/

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Czech Minister, 46M, BTC, Bitcoin, Govt

The Czech Republic has been shaken by a Bitcoin scandal. On Friday, Justice Minister Pavel Blažek resigned, with the opposition set to demand the resignation of the coalition government this week as well.

The situation caught on fire at the end of last week after Blažek, a conservative politician, accepted a large donation in BTC and sold it for about $45.8 million in March, the AP reported. The opposition has raised concerns over the source of the donation.

Blažek received the coins from Tomas Jirikovsky, a convicted criminal. Jirikovsky operated the Sheep Marketplace. In 2017, he went to prison for embezzlement, drug trafficking, and illegal trading of weapons.

Jirikovsky’s lawyer reportedly approached Blažek in March 2025, saying his client would donate 30% of his BTC stash to the ministry. Police had confiscated the wallet containing this BTC and returned it to Jirikovsky after his release in 2021.

Blažek did not check the coins’ origin. “I have no way to investigate the matter, and I wasn’t interested so many years after the case,” he said at a press conference on Thursday. Jirikovsky probably wanted “to repent” through the donation, he said.

He also claimed that courts had not proven that the BTC came from criminal activity.

However, the opposition parties argue that it’s unclear why Jirikovsky gave the coins to the ministry or where the coins came from. They accused Blažek of potential money laundering.

Furthermore, they argue that the state shouldn’t use the money until these points are clear.

Meanwhile, the High Prosecutor’s Office in Olomouc is investigating the case on suspicion of abuse of official authority and laundering of proceeds of crime.

Blažek denied knowledge of wrongdoing. Nonetheless, he said he resigned so not to harm the four-party coalition government led by Prime Minister Petr Fiala. The PM said he believed that Blažek acted with goodwill.

Czech Coalition Government in Danger?

Today, Brno Daily reported that the lower house will hold an urgent session on Thursday. The opposition parties will use the occasion to demand the resignation of the coalition government, the deputy leaders of the ANO and SPD parties, Karel Havlicek and Radim Fiala, said on Sunday.

“We will want the government to find sufficient self-reflection and resign,” Havlicek said. The current cabinet could stay until the parliamentary elections in October, but it shouldn’t have the power to make major decisions.

If the coalition government doesn’t resign,

“We are very strongly considering calling a no-confidence vote in the government.”

Fiala, deputy leader of the far-right SPD, said that his party “will support an extraordinary session” and a vote of no confidence in the government.

However, lower house speaker Jan Skopecek said the opposition’s plans are just “theatre” in the campaign ahead of the elections. He added that Blažek has already resigned, so there is no reason for the cabinet to do so as well.

Moreover, Czech Fiscal Council chair Mojmir Hampl argued that this case raises numerous key technical questions. However, these will not be answered in the pre-election stage.

Meanwhile, Le Monde reported that Jirikovsky had been trying to recover about 1,500 BTC, seized by the police, since his imprisonment. During the trial, the court suspected that the coins came from Nucleus. This is a dark web marketplace that, the report claims, shut down the day after Jirikovsky’s arrest.

Furthermore, BTC market monitors noted that a portion of the Nucleus-linked BTC, dormant since 2016, moved to new wallets in March. This is after Blažek signed the agreement, reports claim.

Jirikovsky claimed that he got to keep the BTC because he had obtained it legally. Blažek claimed he hadn’t made any promises in return for the donation.

All these allegations will likely be brought up during the Thursday emergency session.


]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/czech-minister-steps-down-opposition-calls-for-govt-to-resign-over-46m-in-btc-donated-from-convicted-criminal/feed/ 0 39720 Former SafeMoon CEO Braden Karony convicted on all charges in $200M crypto fraud scheme https://earlybirdsinvest.com/former-safemoon-ceo-braden-karony-convicted-on-all-charges-in-200m-crypto-fraud-scheme/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/former-safemoon-ceo-braden-karony-convicted-on-all-charges-in-200m-crypto-fraud-scheme/#respond Fri, 23 May 2025 23:31:30 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/former-safemoon-ceo-braden-karony-convicted-on-all-charges-in-200m-crypto-fraud-scheme/

A federal jury convicted former SafeMoon Braden John Karony on all charges in a crypto fraud scheme that siphoned millions from investors under false promises of decentralized finance security.

The jury found Karony guilty of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering after a 12-day trial in Brooklyn on May 21.

Prosecutors accused Karony of lying to investors about SafeMoon’s locked liquidity pools while secretly accessing and draining the funds to buy luxury homes and vehicles.

Karony now faces up to 45 years in prison. Jurors also ordered the forfeiture of approximately $2 million in real estate assets linked to the scheme. His sentencing is scheduled for later year.

Meanwhile, co-conspirator Thomas Smith previously pleaded guilty and is also awaiting sentencing, while Kyle Nagy, the third alleged participant, remains at large.

Meanwhile, the SafeMoon project has been taken over by the community which has rebranded it as a memecoin.

Karony orchestrated a deceptive scheme

Karony and his co-conspirators launched SafeMoon in March 2021, marketing it as a secure DeFi token with a self-sustaining liquidity mechanism.

They claimed a 10% tax on every transaction would reward holders and reinforce market liquidity by funding locked pools. In reality, Karony retained full access to those liquidity pools and funneled millions of dollars into personal accounts.

He used the stolen funds to purchase a $2.2 million home in Utah, properties in Kansas, two Audi R8s, a Tesla, and customized trucks.

According to US Attorney Joseph Nocella:

“Karony didn’t build a safe financial product — he built a pipeline for theft. He looted investor funds and used them to fill his garages and bankroll his lifestyle.”

Agents from the IRS-Criminal Investigation, FBI, and Homeland Security Investigations traced the misappropriated assets through a web of pseudonymous wallets and centralized exchange accounts.

Complex crypto trail

IRS-CI and its cyber and J5 task forces followed the digital trail, uncovering how Karony laundered the funds. They collaborated with global enforcement partners from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and the UK to crack the cross-border operation.

IRS-CI Special Agent in Charge Harry T. Chavis, Jr. said:

“Karony lined his driveways with sports cars while deceiving millions. We tracked his crypto movements and exposed the scheme for what it was — outright theft.”

The FBI and HSI also confirmed Karony masked his personal trades of SafeMoon during peak prices, generating additional illegal profits while assuring the public that insiders weren’t manipulating the token.

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]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/former-safemoon-ceo-braden-karony-convicted-on-all-charges-in-200m-crypto-fraud-scheme/feed/ 0 37943 Crypto Whale Who Made Millions on Leverage Trading Is a Convicted Fraudster: ZachXBT https://earlybirdsinvest.com/crypto-whale-who-made-millions-on-leverage-trading-is-a-convicted-fraudster-zachxbt/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/crypto-whale-who-made-millions-on-leverage-trading-is-a-convicted-fraudster-zachxbt/#respond Mon, 24 Mar 2025 00:44:52 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/crypto-whale-who-made-millions-on-leverage-trading-is-a-convicted-fraudster-zachxbt/

A mysterious crypto trader that made millions trading derivatives this year has been identified as William Parker, a convicted fraudster, according to blockchain sleuth ZachXBT.

Parker made $6.8 million on one position after going long on BTC just before Donald Trump’s weekend announcement of a U.S. strategic crypto reserve, per ZachXBT. He then turned around and made another $9 million going short BTC as the price pump quickly reversed.

All of his positions used 50x leverage – a high risk strategy as it means the liquidation price of a position is close to the entry point.

And it seems as though high risk gambling was this particular trader’s speciality, as on-chain data suggests the wallet frequently interacted with Roobet, Gamdom, Shuffle, BC Game, & Metawin accounts – all crypto-based online casinos.

It turns out that the wallet connected to the trades was set as the drainer fee receiver on a phishing website in January, receiving $17.1K from a phishing draining customer in the same month, ZachXBT revealed.

The investigation then dives into a Solana wallet that was the first to interact with the trader’s wallet. This SOL wallet made withdrawals from four casinos following an input validation exploit on a casino game. ZachXBT reached out to these casinos which provided him with a Telegram account of the user.

That Telegram account yielded verification that the trader was active on-chain at the same time as posting in derivatives trading chats on Telegram.

ZachXBT went one step further — finding a payment sent by the trader to an unnamed person on the HyperLiquid exchange. That transaction led to the uncovering of a phone number linked to a person called William Parker.

Parker last year was convicted and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in jail in Finland for stealing $1 million from two casinos in 2023 . He was served time in 2010 in the U.K. for multiple fraud charges related to hacking and gambling.

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