A 39-year-old Romanian man has pleaded guilty to stealing more than $500,000 from a US government benefits program and other crimes.

According to the Northern District of California’s U.S. Attorney’s Office, Marius Marian stole $507,916 in Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) funds from those who rely on the money to cover basic expenses.

He also pleaded guilty to illegally reentering the United States following an aggravated felony conviction and making false statements on his asylum application.

Beginning in March 2024, Marian fraudulently obtained EBT funds by using over 601 unique victim EBT account identifiers. EBT benefits are federal funds distributed through the California Department of Social Services to low-income individuals to use for such things as food, rent, childcare and medical expenses.

Marian used skimmer devices on ATM and point-of-sale machines to capture the victims’ EBT card numbers when the victims used the cards. He then encoded the stolen EBT account information on counterfeit bank cards and used them to fraudulently withdraw EBT funds from ATMs in Northern California.

“As a result of his scheme, Marian withdrew $507,916 in cash and intended to withdraw $611,845 in EBT funds. Marian further admitted that his conduct involved sophisticated means and caused substantial financial hardship to at least 25 victims.

Additionally, Marian admitted that on or around April 27, 2023, he knowingly submitted false statements on an application for asylum to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Specifically, Marian knowingly failed to disclose in his asylum application that he had been previously deported from the United States and that he had previously been convicted in 2019 of bank fraud.

Finally, Marian acknowledged that he had been previously deported after his 2019 conviction for bank fraud and that he thereafter illegally reentered and was found in the United States.”

For theft of the EBT funds, Marian pleaded guilty to one count of bank fraud, which carries a sentence of up to 30 years in prison. The illegal entry into the US charge carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, while the asylum fraud charge carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

Marian is due back in court for sentencing on October 20th.

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This week, bitcoin hit a new all-time-high (above $118K) on the back of strong ETF flows and at least $280 million in new bitcoin treasury investments.

Treasury projects are also cropping up for Ethereum and Solana. Notably, Joseph Lubin’s SharpLink ETH treasury bought 10,000 ETH for that project, and Bitmine announced plans to raise $2 billion for more ETH buying. Off that strong signal, large-cap “alts” like ETH and SOL saw near year-to-date highs, carrying other hot projects like SUI higher as well.

It was a week when the crypto markets seemed to be enjoying themselves as new legislation nears and investment flows from new institutional sources.

The U.S. House said it would take up the Senate version of the GENIUS stablecoin bill, making final passage easier. And industry leaders met on Capitol Hill to lobby for a comprehensive “Market Structure” bill.

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The Trump family’s own crypto dealings continued to make news. Trump Media announced a multi-asset ETF application. And, Tron founder Justin Sun bought $100 million of $TRUMP and promised to help the memecoin go big in Asia and Africa.

Next week (dubbed “Crypto Week”) promises to be historic for crypto news. The House considers stablecoin and market structure legislation and the Senate has a hearing planned on digital asset taxation. First a trickle, then a flood.

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As of press time, neither X nor the people behind the suspended accounts explained the reason for the suspensions.

Users noticed that the accounts were returning “user not found” errors at approximately 7:30 p.m. UTC, effectively removing the chief communication channel for the Solana-based memecoin launchpad site.

Memecoin-related accounts suspended

An X user identified as Otto compiled a list showing dozens of locked profiles, including handles tied to the GMGN and Bloom trading communities. 

Affected accounts included @gmgnai, @haze0x, @arthur_gmgn, @BloomTrading, and @imBFFF00, as well as bot-infrastructure developers such as @bullx_io and @ElizaOS.

Otto described the event as an “internal enforcement sweep” rather than the result of coordinated mass-report campaigns. CryptoSlate has been unable to verify the claim.

Most of the frozen accounts provide trading tools, automated order routing, or marketing services for on-chain assets, functions that often interact with X’s rules on platform manipulation and spam. 

However, the list also includes influencers and well-known traders in the memecoin circles.

Over $10M within an hour

Within the first hour of the account’s disappearance, users flooded Pump.fun with memecoins referencing the suspension and the founder’s alias. 

DEX Screener data as of 8:22 p.m. UTC show five of them among the top 10 tokens trending for the day. Collectively, they accounted for $10.4 million in volume at the time.

Furthermore, 15 out of the 31 tokens that fulfilled the bonding curve and “graduated” from Pump.fun within one hour after the ban were related to the episode.

According to a Dune dashboard by user adam_tehc, the suspension-related tokens that graduated represent 9% of all memecoins that completed the bonding curve on June 16.

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