Judge Colleen McMahon of the Southern District of New York sentenced Amir Elmaani, founder of the Oyster Pearl cryptocurrency project, also known as Bruno Block, to four years in prison.
Cryptocurrency founder “Bruno Block” sentenced to four years in prisonhttps://t.co/7H1W9kpr46
— US Attorney SDNY (@SDNYnews) October 31, 2023
According to the press release, this is the maximum penalty provided by law for the tax violations committed by the defendant.
On April 5, 2023, Elmaani pled guilty to secretly issuing and selling Pearl tokens for personal gain, and failing to pay income tax on that activity, causing a tax loss of $5.5 million.
“Amir Elmaani breached the duty to pay taxes on millions of dollars of cryptocurrency profits, and also misled investors about the token he launched. Market participants in digital assets must play by the rules, and we will relentlessly pursue those who do not,” — said Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Law enforcement filed charges against the Oyster Pearl founder in December 2020.
In the guilty plea, he admitted that in 2017, under the Bruno Block alias, he launched the crypto project. In October 2017, he conducted an ICO for Pearl (PRL) tokens.
To investors and in public, Elmaani claimed that the coin offering would remain fixed and that the smart contract for their issuance was locked. But about a year later, secretly he minted and sold a new batch of tokens.
The asset’s value in investors’ hands collapsed, and the exchange through which Bruno Block conducted operations soon ceased supporting Pearl.
The defendant never met investors and Oyster Pearl staff in person, operating under a pseudonym. The company, which served as the legal shell for the crypto project, was registered under a front company.
For 2017, Elmaani filed a tax return reporting $15,000 in annual income not related to digital assets. In 2018, the entrepreneur did not file a return at all.
According to authorities, during this period he spent more than $10 million on several yachts, $1.6 million on acquiring a company that makes composites. Elmaani became the owner of two cottages worth $700,000, registered to his dummy firm, and made purchases “worth hundreds of thousands of dollars” at home goods stores.
In addition to the prison term, Elmaani must reimburse tax losses totaling over $5.5 million.
In October, the Southern District of New York sentenced employees of the international cryptocurrency pyramid AirBit Club, which became one of the largest in Russia.