Bitcoin Forum

A man was sentenced to 2.5 years for his involvement in a 249 million scam, it seems the two main culprits have escaped overseas, basically the scammers offered the victims a percentage of their mining profits if they invested with them only to be discovered later that no mining took place.

Do you think his punishment is fair? Those people scammed so many people out of their savings in something they knew was fully illegal and yet the sentence is incredibly light, how many people have seen their future crumble just before their eyes or even killed themselves over this.

While it is nice that at least a scammer has to face the justice system at the same time I am disappointed by this short sentence. What do you think of this?

https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-scammer-sentenced-by-south-korean-authorities

At a first glance 2.5 years seem laughable given the financial damages, but with them merely being a "secretary" it looks more warranted. It will be much more interesting to see what sentence the heads of the operation are going to receive, assuming they ever get caught.

The investigation have been lunched a month ago: https://cointelegraph.com/news/investors-defrauded-by-south-korean-pyramid-scheme
The alleged scam is known as Futurnet. By checking about this company, i was surprised to see so many threads here in bitcointalk discussing it and its coin called Futoro Coin. This is a primary list of those threads:
[ANN] FuturoCoin - cryptocurrency with instant payments launched. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2886469.0)
Website is down:
Pool is also down:
FuturoCoin - FutureNet CryptoCurrency (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2927800.0)
Futurocoin: 2 milion business partner waiting, launching 25.11.2017 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2460506.0)
FuturoCoin - FutureNet CryptoCurrency (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2909811.0)

For the secretary who had 2.5 years in prison, i think it's fair if he doesn't own a part of the scammed amount. The alleged company is still under investigation.

It's hard to say, I don't know all circumstances. However, he will still go to prison and that is something and whatever we say 2,5 years is not so short period of time if you are locked. I just hope he will have to return all the money if he kept something and that they will catch his accomplices too.
No matter to all.It's nice to see that not all scamers escape without punishment.

So this guy was aware of what he was doing. He was sending fake messages during 5 months to victims of the scam which makes him actively involved and deserves to be punished. I don't like much eating and sleeping for free in jail as a "punishment"... I prefer to make him work for the community and the money that was supposed to be earned by him to go to the victims...

if the man who got caught knew the modus and was willing to work for them, two and a half years is too short(and I am pretty sure he will be put on a minimum to mild security prison). these people have potentially ruined lives and for them to get that short amount of jail time is like a slap on the hand. but in the end, I still can't help but also blame the victims for their carelessness.

Do you mean the FutureCoin? This one?
https://futurocoin.com/
But, this coin is already listed in Coin Market Cap and CoinGecko althouigh it has low trading volume. but I'm surprised that the price is interesting, around $1.01 USD (increase +6.58%).
Check the details here:
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/futurocoin/
https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/futurocoin
I am not too exact think that it is the Futuro net, this one @coupable?

Well, whichever the project is, if indeed this is indicated to be a scam or proven to be a scam, it must indeed be tried. In this case the loss to the victims might be a bit cured. But when they are punished for the crimes they committed, can the victims' money be returned? Or lost because this is considered no longer a civil law but a criminal law?
2.5 years is probably the best decision from the court. However, for victims who have invested a lot of money and they did not get their money back, this is certainly unfair. What they want is of course their money back too.

Definitely, this is justice served here, they are an accomplice and willing participants in the scam, so 2.5 years is fair to them for being part of this scam. They should go and chase the head though, it might take some time because for sure he is hiding, change his identify, but I do hope that he can bring to justice as well and be put behind bars for good to send strong signals to other crypto scammers and criminals.

2.5 years imprisonment from committing 249 million scams, well, for me isn't fair enough but I was judging because of the amount. But that is the court judgment and for sure they look it fair, then nothing to blame with unless there are something under the table transactions...

But for a thousand scams happening globally but it is very unfortunate to see that only a few of them get caught and sent to jail, still a lot of them freely going around and to scam again. The cybercrime section will should be serious in dealing with these issues as scamming keep increasing. Its absolutely a big challenge in every country and we know that they can't catch them all if we don't help the authorities.

I am not totally sure too. But this is the result i found after a quick search in google. In the links i provided in my last reply, it was mentioned that Futoro coin is the coin of Futurenet. Check again:
And in the official Futoro coin announcement thread, the website is down and the mining pool too. Check links again:

According to this article (https://cointelegraph.com/news/investors-defrauded-by-south-korean-pyramid-scheme), the team behind the alleged scam company is composed by 160 persons. Only the secretary was cought and condamned in jail.

Just 2.5 years? what a light sentence and totally not fair for the persons affected with their schemes maybe its best to put a heavy case and fines for those scumbags like that since if the penalty of their action is something like that for sure the criminal minded person will not be afraid to do something illegal.

We can’t be so sure that the secretary didn’t part of the scam, and 2.5 years is just not reasonable for a high amount like that. Well, people can’t escape this not unless they used the money they get to change their identities which is more possible to happen. Justice will prevail, even if it take too long but I believe that someone is working behind and the Karma will serve to those scammers.

Maybe the 2.5-year sentence for involvement in those caught in the 249 million fraud is still fairly lenient, but that's a court ruling. Maybe the two main criminals who are still fugitives will be charged with an even heavier sentence because they both are the main mastermind of this fraud.

South Korea is good enough to deal with crypto scammers which harm many people. in other developing countries crypto scammers are still free to roam without seriousness by the government to eradicate it.

Being the secretary of the big bosses, that can be considerably have high participation in the scam. That's not that too heavy sentence for him. And on the side note for the victims, at least they caught someone that's relatively part of the scam.

I hope that the big bosses will be caught soon but I don't think that the money will be returned as they'll keep it somewhere.

Some people spent years in prison for just stealing a loaf of bread in order to feed themselves and their family member(s), also 36 years in prison for stealing $50 (https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-spent-36-years-prison-stealing-50-bakery/story?id=65264675) and now, a person who was involved in stealing of 249 million USD by running pyramid scheme faces up to 2.5 years in prison.

What a justice we have... And after stealing $249, we are going to feed him from our pocket (the taxes that you pay from your salary goes to feed  these kind of person while they additionally steal money from you). It gives me a feeling of puke.

Because the reason is there are no clear guidelines to Cryptocurrency investment scams, if they had a law about crypto pyramid scheme's maybe he could have a much longer sentence.
Atleast regulators could see Bitcoin is traceable and not some evil tool for criminal.

To be fair, maybe he was just a nobody. Maybe he wasn't really part of their team but at least someone hired by the main culprits? He might be just their advertising member as the police said


if this guy is part of the team (as in a close friend or a family member), then he knows where the money is or at least where the others are heading. His involvement is still vague which is probably the reason why he was given a short sentence.

According to the article;

The one who was sentenced 2 years and six months was just the secretary who tend to be the messenger too because he was the one who gave fake statements to the investors.

I've found out that there is already futurenet promotions in our country. Is this the one who pays in bitcoin while chatting, etc? That one in social media platform?
BAD feedbacks were already seen in facebook;
- https://m.facebook.com/futurenetponzi/

The sentence is justified but I hope that these will help these scammers reform, I can agree that it is a deterrent but when they get out of jail, the oppurtunity will robbed of them to go back to normal in our society thus restarting the vicious cycle, punishment for people in jail shouldn't stop there, there should be steps taken to effectively reform this people in order to break the cycle, they might not look like but this people wants to change for the better, it is just that the society outcasts them.

to be fair this is not the first time a criminal is caught by the law and is sentenced to prison, specially when their crime is scamming others (not things like hacks, since they are harder to catch). basically they are caught all the time but the news usually covers the crime part (like the exchange getting hacked) since that is more exciting and gets more clicks instead of the getting caught part

The measure is to sentence the scammer and then seize his assets. You why? Most of the prison isn't fair, I have watch some youtube videos concerning prisons, where prisoners often have privileges because of their wealth. But this doesn't holistically saying that most prisons will have this tolerance, but to make sure that things will be fair, if these people scammed or conducted fraud using cryptocurrency, the authorities could actually return the fund of the victims by tracing the transactions made by the scammer. I think this is the best justice victims could have, not just putting the culprit in jail for years.

Those who get punished are like needles in a haystack. Imagine what could have happened, had this crime occurred in a developing nation, such as India or Nigeria? Less than 0.1% of the people who commit such crimes get punished. And this very low conviction rate is what is fueling the scams in the world of cryptocurrency. And even in this case, we don't know whether the stolen money has been recovered or not.

Also, we need to think how this people managed to fool so many people and steal this much amount of money.

Many countries didn't set rules against crypto scam, in my country they just always say to always beware on any schemes that might use bitcoin or crypto into some bad investment or agenda. That's why people here when they think about bitcoin, they already think it's a scam unless they will do a study about, only they will understand it. If in my country, there might put a longer year sentence but then eventually they will also let it free after few days for only minimal amount fee to the enforcers, that's why scammers are free to come and go because of this idealogy and poor implementation of the government.

That was a good move for South Korea, this should happen for all countries as well. They deserve to be in jail for the damage that they have done, I think 2.5 years is not enough for them to the things they have done because they give a lot of damage to the person who has lost their money, what if they really need the money that time for some reasons but they can't pull it out anymore because it has been stolen. They have work for it for so many years or months they gave effort on it and then suddenly it has been lost because of those scammers, this should happen to the hackers as well.
That's true, in our country the action for the scammers is not that too strong especially when we talk about cryptocurrency because our government has not approved this yet. Hoping that the action for these things will occur for every country in this world.

Good thing is that they have given justice to every person who lost their money because of that scam. Those scammers deserve to be in jail for 2.5 years to realize how bad they have done. They really did a big mistake because it involves a huge amount of money, it's not that cheap because there are many people who were involved with the scam. There are many people who get suffered from losing their money.

2.5 years of prison seems like a really small sentence. But then again, it seems that this wasn't the person who was mainly responsible for this scam. There aren't any details available about the level of his involvement, but he worked as a secretary there. Even if he was the one sending statements, there's a chance he didn't know that they weren't true and that the company was scamming everyone. Or maybe he knew but made a deal with the police and shared everything he knew about those two who escaped. I'm not a fan of prisons, so I'm glad the life of this person might not be ruined completely because it's only 2.5 years. And I really think there's too much we don't know about this story, so it's hard to determine whether the sentence was justified.

Personally, I think 2.5 years is so short for what he did. I have seen a lot of news from S. Korea and judging how they sentenced suspects, I keep thinking that their law is kinda awful. Even if he's just the secretary, he is still part of the illegal activity, and it also says that he actively participated so I think he deserves a longer year of imprisonment.

But at least they caught this illegal company. I also hope that victims were able to get back their money (even if they also have their responsibility and mistakes for believing in that investment scheme). And those suspects should also be fined for what they did since it involves a huge amount of money.

This is what we called Justice mate.

I remember how many post i have created about why this scammers are not put into behind bars and now this is it.

Proves How south Korean government strict and serious about the fight against this stupid and greed scammers.
Not they will face the best cases appropriate for them.
But i am wondering why only 2.5 years for that Huge amount of scammed?
seems like this is not enough for the victims of this syndicate ?

The scammers punishment feels light if they do not have to return funds of 249 million. But the prison sentence of 2.5 years is quite severe,
if scammers are required to return 249 million funds. So we have to take into account everything in giving punishment to scammers. But I am
happy that finally there are scammers who have to take responsibility for their actions at detention. Hopefully not only in South Korea scammers
who succeed in prison, hopefully can be followed by other countries as well.

That's how justice is really unfair sometimes. And it depends on where you are and your status in life. A lot of those that can't defend themselves will get sentences that are too much but if you have the money and influence, expect that you will get a lighter sentence. That's huge money that we are talking here, and god knows where they stash it somewhere safe and secure. So once that person is out of prison, he doesn't have to work anymore and enjoy what he buried.

2.5 years of prison time for involvement with 249 million worth of scam!! That's hilariously laughable and makes zero sense. Here the prison time should have been much much higher so it could serve as an example for the wannabe scammers!

This minuscule prison time will actually encourage the scammers to continue with their scam business at full speed! Because now they know that there won't be severe punishment even if they are caught by the enforcement agencies. Disgusting!

As far as the damage they did goes - it is not fair, not even seizing his assets, imo. Besides, there's no assurance if this guy won't ever do the same thing after serving his sentence in prison  :-\. You know... he might return with another name, identity or whatsoever considering the mastermind behind the operation he had worked with still remain uncaught.


But yeah, I couldn't deny this possibility either  :(. It is just sad to know that critical matter like this wasn't properly dealt in a right way.

Good to know that there are justice in South Korea while in other country there are none about cryptocurrency cases.
Nope this is not fair,2.5 years? for 249million dollars?

i think this is not enough mate,we have been in this for looking justice.
actually what is my big concern are those accomplice of this scam,the other 2 who leave their country to hide in other place.

I don't think that's fair, 2.5 years only for that huge scam involvement, I think it should be higher than that.
But anyway, at least justice is served and people who got victim by the scam that the government are serving the interest of the people.

I am not familiar with the law in this specific country, but I think the punishment is based on the amount of involvement on the crime.

Well, for starters I think it's a slap on the wrist for them. Going by how hard South Korea is on hard and illicit drugs, it should also extend such intolerance to other crimes. The convicts may not be the real scammers but they too deserve the same level of punishment. Remember, an accomplice in a crime is as good as the actor/perpetrator. If they weren't involved perhaps the crime wouldn't have been perfected.

He is not the real culprit, he may be someone who worked in ground level but who took all that 250 million maybe never get caught because they are already run away to other country and in this world, there are some places to accommodate such kind of people for real good pay.

I think that the second one was a scam that simply took the name..
The name Futurnet seems to be cursed even ouside the world of crypto:

U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland sentenced Mehta, the former CEO of Detroit-based information technology company FutureNet Group Inc., three months after Dodd was sent to prison for 20 months.
https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2018/12/03/former-futurenet-ceo-parimal-mehta-sentenced-year-bathroom-bribes/2196554002/

And there was another Futurenet that was also a MLM back in 1998!!!
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/1998/11/futurenet-defendant-settles-ftc-charges

Lately was this:
FutureNet Review: $1685 six tier matrix cycler
https://behindmlm.com/mlm-reviews/futurenet-review-1685-six-tier-matrix-cycler/


Interesting that although the site's frontpage is gone, the login page is still there:
https://backoffice.futurenet.club/login
So is their marketing plan:
https://prod-bo-public.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/MARKETING+PLAN.pdf

But I don't see any mention of the coin..

Just asking myself why only 2.5 years  for that  so big amount of scammed  ?

South Korea  is  the place i know with strict  rules  and laws?why sentenced this  short  years?
maybe  the sentenced  person is the one with Less participation?
thats  why those  2 must  be captured and bring to justice.

anyway  lets  be thankful  that at least something was  proven that people can be caught and  judged.

2.5 years for a 249 million scam definitely doesn't seem like a fair judgement to me since the amount involved is too much.
Just imagine that you get free food and a shelter for 249 million and after that you get to keep the 249 million
Seems like you are getting rewarded for a crime though I am not sure if they get to keep that amount and even if not they might just hide it somewhere.
For such a big amount the imprisonment should have been greater than 5 years at least.

This is exactly the reason we see scams on a much larger scale, these stupid idiots knows that they could get away even if you scam anyone millions of dollars and then get away with it for a small sentence and i am sure they will not be paying back the amount they scammed. The rules should be really strict globally for scammers and they should confiscate their entire wealth and distribute to the affected people and then only we will see a reduction in this.

This punishment of 2.5yrs imprisonment is unjust and unfair to a civilized world, this will further encourage the scammer to come back stronger. A life imprisonment should have well been handed over to him and all his asset confiscated. Sadly the justice system can be exploited with a good lawyer.

Scammed almost 250 million and he got only 2.5 years of jail? Lmao!
He would happily serve the 2.5 years sentence. Maybe even get paroled after a year and then enjoy his life. I sure he had hid some of his money somewhere it cannot be traced.

Don't see why would someone kill themselves over this? The scammer got caught and I am kinda sure they will get back their money (unless they themselves were committing illegal act. They can say good bye to their coins).

Been watching korean dramas lately, I guess this could be a basis for my opinion. Court sentences in Korea is very low, you can be jailed for 3 years after robbing, 2 years for theft but I don't know about heinous crimes like rape and murder.

2.5 years after being involved in a multi-million scam is quite fair for me, after reading the article the person is 43 years old, secretary of the illegal company for only 4 months, he must have left when he found out the wrongful act of his company, that's why he is sentenced just for a very low imprisonment time for not telling the authorities about it. " No details were given about the magnitude of his involvement " the court probably saw that this guy has nothing to do mainly with the scam he just promoted what his boss asked him to do, he just knew it but consequence must be served.

the furthereance of fraudstars existing within the crypto space is one of the reasons why people get scared of coming into the space and technology. I think wwho ever is caught in the business of scamming people via schemes said to be a part of the spcae should face dire consequential punishment.

I agree,  the rules should be extremely strict in the sense that scammers would think twice before indulge in scamming activities, if they were made to pay every penny they took and then face with a strict sentence, it would have been much better,  scammers should not be pitied because they are vicious.

It serves him right. 2.5 years imprisonment term is just a warming of being involved of crypto scam. Maybe next time, the jail term will be much depending on the level of involvement.
The other two should be jailed also. South Korea should live the case open until they track the other two that traveled. None of them should go unpunished

2.5 years in prison might be short and not really that much equal on the crime that they had committed but we cant do anything about it if the court do make out such decision.
How much more if this one is bailable? Since they do have money then they do have the power on freeing up themselves on such crime but if not then 2.5 wont really be that too long
but im wondering if there would be possible subject to change up on said duration?

Punishment should be implemented according to the laws that govern the guilt, it's a good sign to let everyone that there's rules in this kind of crime.


As long as those involvement are being tracked, those people should also serve the right punishments, no one should be freely go without verdict.

A short sentence it should prolong the punishment as others scammer would realize if in case they will get caught it just 2.5 years of suffering. Even short punishment this shows justice to those victim of this scammers. This really serves a warning to those scammer that still exists these days.

Scammers if caught need to be punished severely. With the criminals being sentenced to 2.5 years of imprisonment the justice is alive, but the punishment is not equal to the damages the culprits have caused to the common people as well as to the cryptocurrency network. These kind of scams truly affect the goodness cryptocurrencies have got. With these kind of activities people blankly end up cryptocurrencies were scam.

Is this the final punishment for the scammer or has it just become a claim that may be reduced further? And if jailed for 2.5 years, can the victims receive more of their money losses? Or is their money really gone forever? If so, then it would be unfair for the victims that scammers of 249 million scams to only get a prison sentence of 2.5 years. Wouldn't it be fairer if they also returned the money of the victims of the scam if it was proven?

If we decide our own, probably it has been prosecuted to electric chair or something terrible but they have the law and they need to follow it. Besides, not all accussed and proven guilty are need to suffer a harsh punishment. Scamming is not killing and that also we need to kill them if caught.

Though we say that 2.5 years is imprisonment for million scam issue is unfair (really unfair), maybe we could make it 30 years...but that is the court's decision and that is final.

The punishment was served according to the magnitude of involvement to the crime.  the person is just an accomplice, not the mastermind or the one pulling the string.  He is just a paid laborer in a short period of 4 months.  I think the punishment is fair enough to signal that anyone connected or involved in a scam will be punished.  I just hope those who recruit people, the one called sponsors would be punished too. 

Yeah, well, I guess you're right. At least not all of those culprits get away with their crimes. But, it's just the secretary. It would be more just if the mastermind (s) will be caught and punished, too. 2.5 years of imprisonment is somehow long enough since he's just an accomplice. But considering the damages it done to the victims, and with that huge amount, that's surely unfair. For the boss(es), on the other hand, I hope they'd be put in jail for a longer time and return what they took from those people.

Do the scammers still hope that they manage to evade justice?

I'm not sure what "mass-produced" victims are, but that's probably just a translation oddity.

Anyway, at least there was some justice done in this case, even if only one person thus far got any jail time.  I think most crypto scams end up with nobody being prosecuted, so at least 2.5 years in the slammer is something. 

Right, that's what I gleaned from the article--and it sounds like the investigation isn't even over, so hopefully those scammers with more culpability will get even more prison time.

I personally don't believe in the justice system. To me it makes no sense how for some trials you get a sentence for 7 years just by stealing a loaf of bread, while in some cases you get 2-3 years for money laundering or drug dealing.

In this particular circumstance, it seems that the scam was successful at fooling people as you wouldn't give your money away as investment without seeing any proof of the mining or some sort of expected return. As for his 2.5 year sentence I can't say I agree or disagree as I do not know the full extent of the story.

Did he return back all the money he accumulated by scamming the people? If he hasn't that means no justice


The website is not down I just checked and it's still running.
https://i.imgur.com/OUY7jzv.png

Don't know about the pool, I wish not to go beyond this.  
https://i.imgur.com/n6j44O7.png

Pleased to know he was caught. I wont really say that 2.5 years is big nor small. I'd rather talk about the 'mining' part. Most people just don't get that mining isn't done with all sites/people. Most of them are scam. And even after they've read people testifying to being scammed, they'll still fall in. While he stay in there for his 2.5 years, I just hope people get smarter and understand the age we're in.

Such news is rarely available at present. In this way, if some scammers are caught and sent to jail, other scammers will be scared. Every government should take steps so that the people of their country can work safely online. From the depths of my heart I welcome the initiative of South Korea.