US citizen charge with running a Ponzi scheme/crypto token backed by diamond

[Jating]

Defendant Charged in $25 Million Diamond Ponzi Scheme

MIAMI -- South Florida federal prosecutors have charged 51-year-old Jose Angel Aman, of Washington D.C., with wire fraud, for allegedly operating a fraudulent diamond investment scheme.

Ariana Fajardo Orshan, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and George L. Piro, Special Agent in Charge, FBI Miami Field Office, made the announcement.

According to the allegations of a criminal information, from May 2014 through May 2019, Aman and his partners solicited people throughout the United States and Canada to invest in diamond contracts.  It is alleged that Aman and his partners promised investors that they would use their money to purchase rough colored diamonds, which Aman would cut, polish and resell at a profit. They reassured investors that their money was safe because it was secured by Aman’s inventory of diamonds (purportedly valued at $25 million). Aman and his partners presented the investment as a high return, no risk deal.

These promises and statements were  false.  According to the information, Aman rarely used investors’ money to purchase rough diamonds. He never cut, polished and resold rough diamonds. Nor did Aman have a $25 million diamond  inventory. To conceal the fraud from investors, Aman allegedly made purported interest payments to investors by using new investors’ money to pay earlier ones.  According to the charging document, at the end of the investment period, Aman and the partners would convince the investors to roll over their money by falsely claiming that the investors had the full value of their investments to put into new deals.  They allegedly provided sham “Reinvestment Contracts” to the investors,  a tactic they  used to buy time until Aman could locate new investors and additional money.

It is alleged that when this scheme was about to collapse, Aman set up a new business, Argyle Coin, LLC, which was purportedly in the business of developing a cryptocurrency token backed by diamonds.  Aman solicited new investors for Argyle, promising high rates of return with no risk.  Aman allegedly used only a fraction of the money received from Argyle investors to develop a cryptocurrency token, instead using most of it to pay purported interest payments to the earlier investors and to benefit himself and his partners, according to the charging document.  

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/defendant-charged-25-million-diamond-ponzi-scheme


Crypto backed by Diamond, Lol, or any precious metals for that matter, sounds like a scam. I think this is during the height of ICO in 2017 that's why it attracted a lot of investors back then because there are too many who just blindly trust on ICO that time. And I think this is the one, First cryptocurrency correlated to natural fancy colored diamonds!.

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[jackg]

$25 million imo sounds kinda medium sized for scams that go on here, I bet we've had a lot higher in crypto by now.

You're definitely better off buying diamonds/gold and storing them or investing in their production, vaulted stuff is vat free to ensure you can't get hold of it imo (or are greatly discouraged). I do remember a lot of schemes that were diamond backed back in the day (I'm sure there was a dnd coin or something) doubt much happened with those either other than a wealthy anonymous ceo.

[avikz]

$25 million is a huge sum of money. I am sure this ponzi is running from a long time otherwise they wouldn't have siphoned this money overnight! However, it is not good to generalize all stablecoins just because one person was committing a crime. The biggest stablecoin USDT, is still not audited their holdings. I smell a bigger scam there!

For Jack's comment - normal diamond is not a great investment. People mostly use it for capital protection and it is difficult to sell diamonds in open market. Diamond can become a great investment only if someone can buy a colored diamond which usually are sold through auctions.

[Kemarit]

$25 million imo sounds kinda medium sized for scams that go on here, I bet we've had a lot higher in crypto by now.

Yes, there are bigger scams out there,  but still $25 million is huge to say the least. And remember that this is during the madness of 2017, wherein everyone thought that they can double their money in short amount of time. And SEC did stop them before they can dup more investors:

(https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2019-72)

So probably it could be bigger.

You're definitely better off buying diamonds/gold and storing them or investing in their production, vaulted stuff is vat free to ensure you can't get hold of it imo (or are greatly discouraged). I do remember a lot of schemes that were diamond backed back in the day (I'm sure there was a dnd coin or something) doubt much happened with those either other than a wealthy anonymous ceo.

Diamonds? Nah? better go with Gold, been investing in a form of jewelries, used to buy gold jewelries like 20 years ago, and up to now, I can still make use of it, specially if I need quick cash, just go to the nearest pawnshop  .

[posi]

Crypto backed by Diamond, Lol, or any precious metals for that matter, sounds like a scam. I think this is during the height of ICO in 2017 that's why it attracted a lot of investors back then because there are too many who just blindly trust on ICO that time. And I think this is the one, First cryptocurrency correlated to natural fancy colored diamonds!.

Honestly, there are still some new project that use the previous metal backed base project to scam cryptocurrency investors but what dont make people aware of there existence is because the Defi project are project with huge traffic lately and as theres scam precious metal backed project so theres also genuine project out there. This is the reason why i took my time to expose some lied precious metal backed crypto project.

[btc_angela]

Crypto backed by Diamond, Lol, or any precious metals for that matter, sounds like a scam. I think this is during the height of ICO in 2017 that's why it attracted a lot of investors back then because there are too many who just blindly trust on ICO that time. And I think this is the one, First cryptocurrency correlated to natural fancy colored diamonds!.

Honestly, there are still some new project that use the previous metal backed base project to scam cryptocurrency investors but what dont make people aware of there existence is because the Defi project are project with huge traffic lately and as theres scam precious metal backed project so theres also genuine project out there. This is the reason why i took my time to expose some lied precious metal backed crypto project.

I agree, what we are seeing is just the repeat, and scammers are not going to stop even though one of them have been caught already. To be fair, there might be some projects that are legit but we can that 90% of precious backed projects are out right scams. But the problem is that investors still fall for this old trick because of the current hype on Defi, pushing the altcoin market into a sort of mini bull run that's why investors are pouring their money on every new Defi or precious metals back projects.

[Harlot]

Just the audacity of this guy on creating a cryptocurrency "backed by diamonds" just to keep his scam going. I don't know why criminals think this way where if they are pushed in a corner they will create a new scam just to continue milking new people into getting their scam, it's like they got blinded by the money involved in it that they only see greed. Good thing they caught this guy but the bad thing is they got him when he have fooled a lot of investors already which millions of dollars isn't really a joke.

[stompix]

I was curious about something, and of course, the coin had an ANN  here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4976843.0
99% shilling material.

Diamonds? Nah? better go with Gold, been investing in a form of jewelries, used to buy gold jewelries like 20 years ago, and up to now, I can still make use of it, specially if I need quick cash, just go to the nearest pawnshop  .

I don't know how is it in your country but here you're losing tons of money if you try to sell gold jewelry at a pawn shop.
I've once enquired about this during the last crisis when we were low on cash we needed money to keep the farm running before the paychecks came and the prices for gold were simply a no go, not even counting the fact that they don't give a fact about the value of the jewel itself.

Everyone talks about how good it is to have a reserve in gold but most of them have never been forced to actually make use of it.

But anyhow, this time there is really no comparison, investing in a promise of payment versus something tangible in your possesion.

[Kemarit]

I was curious about something, and of course, the coin had an ANN  here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4976843.0
99% shilling material.

Diamonds? Nah? better go with Gold, been investing in a form of jewelries, used to buy gold jewelries like 20 years ago, and up to now, I can still make use of it, specially if I need quick cash, just go to the nearest pawnshop  .

I don't know how is it in your country but here you're losing tons of money if you try to sell gold jewelry at a pawn shop.
I've once enquired about this during the last crisis when we were low on cahs we needed money to keep the farm running before the paychecks came and the prices for old were simply a no go, not even counting the fact that they don't give a fact about the value of the jewel itself.

Everyone talks about how good it is to have a reserve in gold but most of them have never been forced to actually make use of it.

But anyhow, this time there is really no comparison, investing in a promise of payment versus something tangible in your possesion.

I did not say that I'm going to sell (pardon if I didn't get myself clear), what I do is "pawn" them lower than the actual price, specially if I needed urgent cash on hand. Of course, if you sold them it will be below the price. But in any case, as per may personal experience, it really help me a lot during that time.

Just imagine one jewelry I have bought from a person in 1999 that I still have in my possession, if I'm going to sell it at the current price, I still have made a lot of ROI. But I will not, as I'm just going to pawn it if needed and then get it back the soonest.

And the best way to sell gold jewelries here is through person-to-person, and not in a pawnshop.

[jossiel]

While reading the context.

I've read about the "high return, no risk". It bangs already and it's also due to the greediness of the investors. You will never find something like this. Government bonds are giving low or at least no risk investments but you'll never get a high return.

So, Aman started new "venture" through crypto or might be an ICO but with the same scheme. Good thing that he's charged. His style is no different from the others.

[posi]

Crypto backed by Diamond, Lol, or any precious metals for that matter, sounds like a scam. I think this is during the height of ICO in 2017 that's why it attracted a lot of investors back then because there are too many who just blindly trust on ICO that time. And I think this is the one, First cryptocurrency correlated to natural fancy colored diamonds!.

Honestly, there are still some new project that use the previous metal backed base project to scam cryptocurrency investors but what dont make people aware of there existence is because the Defi project are project with huge traffic lately and as theres scam precious metal backed project so theres also genuine project out there. This is the reason why i took my time to expose some lied precious metal backed crypto project.

I agree, what we are seeing is just the repeat, and scammers are not going to stop even though one of them have been caught already. To be fair, there might be some projects that are legit but we can that 90% of precious backed projects are out right scams. But the problem is that investors still fall for this old trick because of the current hype on Defi, pushing the altcoin market into a sort of mini bull run that's why investors are pouring their money on every new Defi or precious metals back projects.

That makes sense cause 90% of all cryptocurrency investors are into because of the profit involved in it and the traffic crypto market usually presented when the market is bullish shows that investors always look for every means in making money through crypto without adequate knowledge but this is understandable because what they are only informed about cryptocurrency is the profit aspect this was what happened to an old friend of mine I just met through a WhatsApp group.
I have to give him another lesson about cryptocurrency for almost 3 hours.