The CEO of the alleged cryptocurrency trading platform EminiFX, Eddy Alexandre, could spend up to 10 years in prison for his involvement in the scam causing his investors to lose money.
In a New York district court, Eddy Alexandre, the CEO of alleged cryptocurrency trading platform EminiFX, pled guilty and agreed to repay millions of dollars to clients who lost money as a result of his “cryptocurrency investment scheme”.
On February 10, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed that Alexandre had entered a guilty plea to one count of commodities fraud and would forfeit over $248 million in addition to paying unspecified restitution.
In regard to his participation in EminiFX, Alexandre was detained and charged in May. He initially entered a not guilty plea, but on February 10 he modified it. The maximum punishment for him is ten years in prison.
From around September 2021 to May 2022, Alexandre controlled the cryptocurrency and FX trading platform and “solicited more than $248 million in investments from tens of thousands of individual individuals,” according to U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams.
Williams claimed Alexandre claimed EminiFX could provide “monthly returns of at least 5%,” but in truth, the CEO utilized part of the money for personal purchases and didn’t invest a “significant percentage” of it.
He hailed EminiFX as a platform for passive income that “assured” the claimed returns on investment by automating trading in cryptocurrencies and foreign currencies using a top-secret new technology.
Alexandre promised investors that their money will quadruple within five months while refusing to explain the technology. Investors in the program were misled into believing they had received the promised 5% returns.
Alexandre didn’t tell investors that he actually lost millions of dollars on the money he did invest.
He also transferred about $14.7 million to his own account, spent about $155,000 on a BMW and more on Mercedes Benz payments.
Despite the deception Alexandre committed, some EminiFX investors supported him.
According to a Bloomberg story from August 10th, a small number of people flew from abroad to attend a plea hearing in August. A supporter asserted that the allegations against Alexandre were racist.
The Commodities Futures Trading Commission is suing Alexandre in a separate civil case for “fraudulent solicitation and misappropriation” in connection with cryptocurrency and foreign exchange trading.
Will victims of EminiFX get compensated?
Melmac Solutions, one of the global leaders in cybersecurity, uncovered and indicated this investment scam has been running a massive fake investment scheme since at least 2021. We were able to trace down a complex network infrastructure of over 300 scam domains hosted on 70 servers, and EminiFX’s scam kit to lure the victims onto fake investment portals the scammers have been impersonating 40 popular European brands from the banking, fin-tech, crypto, and asset management industries.
We have accessed the mainnet of EminiFX and downloaded their entire mining block but the pubkeys to the transactions are encrypted/encoded in P2PKH addresses which spreads across a public ledger known as the blockchain.
Editor’s closing note: