SafeMoon CTO Pleads Guilty to Fraud Charges: Massive Crypto Fraud Case
In a case that US authorities claim involves a multimillion-dollar cryptocurrency fraud conspiracy, SafeMoon LLC’s chief technology officer pleaded guilty to two felonies. On February 20, Thomas Smith, SafeMoon’s IT head, appeared before Magistrate Judge Cheryl Pollak and pled guilty to conspiracy charges of wire fraud and securities fraud. He revoked his prior not-guilty plea, according to a filing submitted to a federal court in Brooklyn.
US District Judge Eric Komitee, who is presiding over Smith’s case, was advised by Judge Pollak to accept the revised plea. The maximum penalty for securities fraud conspiracy is 25 years in jail, while the maximum penalty for wire fraud conspiracy is 20 years.
DOJ Charges SafeMoon Leaders with Money Laundering & Fraud: Here’s What We Know
Smith was charged in November 2023 with securities and wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy together with SafeMoon CEO Braden John Karony and founder Kyle Nagy by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The three allegedly marketed a token known as SafeMoon (SFM), misled SFM customers that the token’s liquidity was locked and they couldn’t access it, and then embezzled the fund for their own use.
Prosecutors and the SEC said that the three executives embezzled more than $200 million from SFM and utilized investor money for their own purchases of real estate and expensive cars. At the time of the charges, Smith and Karony were taken into custody. Although he is still at large, Nagy is said to have reappeared in Russia. Karony tried to have the charges thrown out in April of last year after entering a not-guilty plea. In mid-September of last year, Smith also petitioned to have the charges dismissed.
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