Arizona con artist pleads guilty to $13 million cryptocurrency pyramid scheme

Arizona resident Vincent Mazzotta Jr., known by the aliases *Vincent Midnight*, *Delta Prime* and *Director Vinchenzo*, has pleaded guilty to money laundering and conspiracy to obstruct justice. The scheme involved defrauding investors with false promises of profits from artificial intelligence in crypto trading, as well as creating a fictitious government agency.

According to the US Department of Justice, Mazzotta, together with an accomplice David Safron, lured more than $13 million from unsuspecting investors by promising high returns on cryptocurrency investments through firms *Mind Capital*, *Cloud9Capital* and others. The fraudsters claimed to be using innovative AI-based trading bots.

Later, to “cover their tracks”, they invented an organization called the Federal Crypto Reserve (FCR) and convinced victims to pay additional amounts to “investigate missing investment funds.” At the same time, Mazzotta participated in the destruction of evidence after Safron’s arrest: he deleted files from the iPad and personal safe, and also falsified documents of the company Runway Beauty Inc.

This high-profile case was investigated by the Criminal Division of the Ministry of Justice, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Central District of California and tax investigators of the IRS-CI. The department emphasizes: the fraudsters were hiding behind fictitious structures, impersonating representatives of the state, and played on the trust of citizens in new financial technologies. The suspect faces up to 10 years for money laundering and up to 5 years for obstructing the investigation. The sentence will be handed down by a federal judge after studying the circumstances of the case.

This case once again proves: promises of easy earnings in cryptocurrency can turn into a financial disaster. The US federal authorities will continue to act decisively against any attempts to deceive in digital investments.