- Braden Karony, CEO of SafeMoon, was found guilty of leading a crypto fraud scheme that misled investors and diverted millions for personal use.
- Although SafeMoon was designed to benefit users through transaction fees and liquidity pools, Karony secretly accessed these funds and used them to fund his lifestyle.
The CEO of Safemoon, Braden Karony, has been found guilty in a high-profile cryptocurrency fraud. The CEO could spend as long as 45 years behind bars due to the gravity of the case.
The verdict comes after all investigations revealed that Karony played a central role in orchestrating systems that were cheating investors and wrongly taking millions in crypto from them.
Braden was convicted by a U.S. federal jury for working with others to trick investors and secretly moving large amounts of the invested funds for his personal use. The trial lasted for 12 days and took place in the Eastern District of New York.
According to the details of the conviction, Karony could face up to 45 years in jail. The jury also ordered him to give up a house and the money he got from selling another of his properties, all of which are worth about $2 million. Officials said that the scheme he carried out increased investors’ trust in crypto and added to fears about dishonesty in the crypto world.
How SafeMoon Operated and How Karony Abused the System
SafeMoon tokens were launched in March 2021 by SafeMoon LLC on a public blockchain. The token operated in such a way that each transaction was charged a 10% fee. For instance, if someone sent 10 tokens, the receiver would get only 9, and 1 would be kept as a fee.
This charge (1 token in this case) would be divided into two parts, with one part shared to all holders so as to increase the amount of tokens they owned. The second part was added to SafeMoon’s liquidity pools to help trading run smoothly. After the launch, the project quickly gained millions of users and reached a market value of over $8 billion.
Karony broke his own part of the agreement and instead kept access to these locked funds and spent much of the money on personal items like homes, an Audi R8, a Tesla, and custom trucks. He also used fake accounts and unknown wallets to hide his actions. In total, Karony made over $9 million from this fraud.
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