- Robert Dunlap, 55, of Houston, Texas, was sentenced to 23 years in federal prison for orchestrating a US$20 million cryptocurrency fraud through the Meta-1 Coin Trust from 2018 to 2023.
- Dunlap falsely claimed the token was backed by US$1 billion in art and US$44 billion in gold, using forged documents to conceal that no backing existed.
- Nearly 1,000 investors were defrauded, with many losing their entire life savings to the scheme, which prosecutors described as relying on fabricated audits and certificates.
Robert Dunlap, a 55-year-old Houston man, was sentenced to 23 years in federal prison after defrauding nearly 1,000 investors of more than US$20 million (AU$28 million) through a fake cryptocurrency scheme built on false claims of art and gold backing.
US District Judge LaShonda A. Hunt handed down the sentence in the Northern District of Illinois after a federal jury convicted Dunlap on mail fraud charges.
The court also ordered him to pay restitution to victims, many of whom lost retirement funds and life savings.
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Prosecutors said Dunlap ran the fraud through Meta-1 Coin Trust from 2018 to 2023. He marketed the token as being backed by US$1 billion (AU$1.4 billion) in fine art, including works attributed to Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh and Salvador Dalí, as well as US$44 billion (AU$61.6 billion) in gold reserves.
According to prosecutors, none of that backing existed. Dunlap used fabricated audits, certifications and other false documents to make the assets appear real and to give the scheme credibility. Those claims helped attract nearly 1,000 investors.
Dunlap claimed the token was supported by roughly US$45 billion (AU$63 billion) in assets, even though the scheme collected just over US$20 million (AU$28 million) from victims.
The sentence is among the harshest imposed in a US cryptocurrency fraud case. It was handled by the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois, which has brought several major crypto-related enforcement actions in recent years.
In Dunlap’s case, prosecutors said the scheme combined the appeal of cryptocurrency with false references to high-value art and gold in order to persuade investors that the project was legitimate.
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