A Court in New York has found Braden John Karony the former Chief Executive Officer of Safemoon guilty of all criminal charges against him including charges of fooling investors, stealing money through online fraud and hiding the stolen funds.
According to data from the Department of Justice of the United States, Karony and his team have tricked people into investing in Safemoon by providing false information.
It is worth noting that the gathered money was used for managing personal expenses including buying custom trucks, sports cars, houses and a few others.
Joseph Nocella, a U.S attorney, said, “As proven at trial, the SafeMoon digital asset was anything but safe and turned out to be pie in the sky for investors who were deliberately misled by Karony. Karony used his scheme to purchase multiple homes, sports cars, custom trucks, and other luxury goods.”
According to data from CoinMarketCap, Safemoon V2 has lost 5.08% of its trading prices in the past 24 hours and reached $0.00001811 and in the weekly frame it is down by 14.31%.
It is important to note that despite claims of a locked liquidity pool of Safemoon, Karony, with the help of Thomas Smith and Kyle Nagy, has accessed these liquidity pools.
From the total gained $9 million Karony, has used $2.2 million to buy a house in Utah, and has also bought 2 luxury-class audi, a Tesla and a custom truck.
Safemoon controversy explained
Safemoon a known crypto-based company following the claims and arguments over fraud, mismanagement, and deceptive practices.
The legal action first came when the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States charged Safemoon and its founders with the Chief Technical Officer with frauds, unregistered securities offering, and money laundering.
Charged officials of SafeMoon were accused of Manipulating the market by using misappropriate funds to prop up the prices of the token through massive buying and wash trading.
From March to April 2021, SafeMoon’s price increased by more than 55,000%, reaching a market valuation of $5.7–$17 billion, majorly driven by celebrity endorsements from people like Lil Yachty, Nick Carter, Jake Paul, and others.
Experts argue that, in the initial phase Safemoon promised many innovative features including static rewards, a self-sustaining pool, but when launched it was having no real world usage.
Also in March 2023, Safemoon was hacked for $9 million, yet following the breach, the hackers returned the rest, keeping $2 million.
Crypto market price updates
Until publishing the crypto market cap was $3.49 trillion with an increase of 3.97% and the crypto fear and greed index had reached 73 which was 68 the day earlier.
Bitcoin is now trading at $110,492 with an increase of 3.80% in the intraday frame and Ethereum added 5.51% reaching $2,675 and XRP surged more than 4.60% reaching $2.44.
The intraday gainers list has been ruled by SPX6900, which added 24.98% reaching $0.9190 followed by Dogwifhat, Hyperliquid, Fartcoin, Brett, Worldcoin and Pudgy Penguins.
