The Unbelievable True Story of Michael Mancil Brown – the man who lost over $23 BILLION in crypto.
Brown found #Bitcoin in early 2010. When he first got involved, 1 #BTC was less than $0.01. He claimed to know Satoshi’s identity.
Brown said his employers were paying him to generate MASSIVE amounts of Bitcoin. In total, he mined over 370,000 Bitcoin with their servers. But they soon lost interest.
As Brown tells it, he convinced his bosses to sell him the project for $5,000. He got 371,000 #BTC in the deal. That’s $0.01 per coin !!.
Shortly after, Brown mysteriously disappeared. Some wondered what happened to the 370,000 $BTC . By that time, his #Bitcoin was worth $1 million.
Behind the scenes, Brown’s life was more complicated
In 2009, he had been raided by the Secret Service.
Now they were investigating him again. This time it was in connection with a ransom scandal. One that involved a major presidential candidate.
In fact, the U.S. government was accusing Brown of extortion. They believed he had stolen Mitt Romney’s tax returns and that he was holding them for a $1 million ransom !!
In the early days of Bitcoin, this was explosive headline news. Brown went on TV to claim he was innocent but police seized his computers and arrested him.
Yet, the evidence was against him. Agents were able to connect him to the hard drive mailed to Romney. It contained a photo of his own cat. one identified by his own home camera video.
So, in 2016, Brown aka KnightMB was convicted of the crime. He was indicted by a jury. He was forced to pay $200,000 and spent 48 months in prison.
One year later, Brown managed to get his sentence reviewed
He claimed others had access to his computers, that his friends were the real crooks but the court upheld his conviction.
Brown claims that the lawsuit’s costs left him destitute.
As to what happened to his 371,000 Bitcoin That remains a mystery.
