Key takeaways:
- After entering a guilty plea for conspiring to commit wire fraud, the former CEO of IcomTech was given a five-year jail sentence.
- Ochoa entered a guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to conduct wire fraud in September, which was connected to an IcomTech Ponzi scam based on crypto.
After entering a guilty plea for conspiring to commit wire fraud, Marco Ochoa, the former CEO of the cryptocurrency mining company IcomTech, was given a five-year jail sentence.
Judge Jennifer Rochon ordered Ochoa to forfeit $914,000 and voluntarily surrender to fulfill his 60-month sentence, starting on March 19, according to a January 19 filing in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. His two-year supervised release period is set.
Ochoa entered a guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to conduct wire fraud in September, which was connected to an IcomTech Ponzi scam based on cryptocurrencies. From 2018 to 2019, he led the mining company as its CEO. In September, US Attorney Damian Williams stated:
“IcomTech was one of these large-scale copycat cryptocurrency scams and Ochoa, as the purported CEO, played an important role taking IcomTech to scale and ultimately harming more victims,”
The Justice Department claims that although IcomTech did not allow clients to withdraw their money, the company guaranteed daily profits on investment products. In November 2022, some three years after IcomTech’s demise, Ochoa and other executives were charged by the authorities.
In December 2023, David Carmona, the creator of IcomTech, entered a guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Ochoa was the first to be sentenced; the other four former executives listed as defendants in the case have submitted guilty and not guilty pleas.
In response to an enforcement action by US authorities, numerous cryptocurrency personalities have been seen in court during the past 12 months. Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the former CEO of FTX, was found guilty in November 2023 of seven felonies and is scheduled to be punished in March.
As per the agreement between the prosecutors and the cryptocurrency exchange, Changpeng Zhao, the former CEO of Binance, entered a guilty plea to one count of felony.
