Head of Crypto-Related Scam Faces up to 20 Years in Jail Over Investor Fraud

A 42-year-old Blake Kantor, connected with ATM Coin, plead guilty before a New York federal judge.

Blake Kantor, a New Jersey businessman, will face up to twenty years’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to a New York federal judge for defrauding investors in binary options and virtual currency ATM Coin. Kantor has also admitted to obstructing of a federal investigation into his Ponzi schemes, US Department of Justice said on Monday.

In April this year, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) charged Kantor, aka Bill Gordon, for offering illegal off-exchange binary options through his firm Blue Bit Analytics (BBB). The defendant raised $1.5 million from around 700 investors between 2014 and 2017. BBB’s computer software was manipulating the trading operations in favor of the company. Kantor and his staff also convinced some of BBB clients to invest their returns in cryptocurrency, called ATM Coin, which they represented as an extremely profitable asset.

After the CFTC charges, a team of New York federal attorneys, agents from the Criminal Investigation unit of the Internal Revenue Services (IRS), CFTC investigators, and specialist from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) revealed that Kantor had directed a counterpart to alter the BBB list to hide the real name of the company clients and their investments. The defendant admitted all charges including lying to FBI agents.

Kantor’s sentence is expected in a few months. He will also face restitution, criminal forfeiture and a fine.

“We will continue to protect the integrity of the financial marketplace by prosecuting to the fullest extent those who deceive the investing public and obstruct the pursuit of justice,” Richard P. Donoghue, Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, explained in the press release.

At the time of writing, the ATM Coin website was still operational. The project had the following note to investors:

“Under applicable provisions of international law, ATM Coin, as any other legal tender, or the authority issuing it may not be the subject of investigation by any authority in regard to its use by any person found to be acting against any law […]”