How John Karony went from visionary to convicted fraudster
The post How John Karony went from visionary to convicted fraudster appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com. On the afternoon of Wednesday, May 21, 2025, in a windowless, high-ceilinged courtroom in Brooklyn, Judge Eric Komitee read the jury’s verdict. On the charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud: guilty. On the charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering: guilty. On the charge of conspiracy to commit securities fraud: guilty. Former SafeMoon CEO Braden John Karony had been convicted of a conspiracy to defraud investors in the notorious token. Karony, tall and bearded, sat through the trial in a razor-sharp blue suit, absorbing evidence against him with calm detachment. He barely reacted to the verdict. By contrast, former SafeMoon investors around the world celebrated wildly. For them, Karony’s conviction was vindication after a nearly four-year struggle to prove they’d been ripped off. Over the course of a 12-day trial, government prosecutors had convinced a jury that Karony and his co-conspirator had lied about SafeMoon’s features and finances, while extracting as much as $200 million in what could be described as a “slow rug-pull.” Read more: SafeMoon CEO branded ‘remorseless liar’ in explosive closing argument Now Karony faces as long as 45 years in prison — though his sentence is likely to be much less. Indeed, former FTX head Sam Bankman-Fried only got 25 years for a fraud nearly 50 times larger. That’s just one index of SafeMoon’s relative insignificance. Most crypto veterans regarded it as a bit of a joke even at release, and its dramatic collapse under scandalous fraud allegations was overshadowed by larger and more shocking frauds, like Three Arrows Capital, Celsius, and the aforementioned FTX. However, the SafeMoon saga, in all its low-rent absurdity, bitter infighting, grandiose delusion, and sheer incompetence, may be a better encapsulation of crypto’s maximum-fraud era than those slick, respectable-looking cons. If Su Zhu and Alex Mashinsky flew too close to…
The post How John Karony went from visionary to convicted fraudster appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.
On the afternoon of Wednesday, May 21, 2025, in a windowless, high-ceilinged courtroom in Brooklyn, Judge Eric Komitee read the jury’s verdict. On the charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud: guilty. On the charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering: guilty. On the charge of conspiracy to commit securities fraud: guilty. Former SafeMoon CEO Braden John Karony had been convicted of a conspiracy to defraud investors in the notorious token. Karony, tall and bearded, sat through the trial in a razor-sharp blue suit, absorbing evidence against him with calm detachment. He barely reacted to the verdict. By contrast, former SafeMoon investors around the world celebrated wildly. For them, Karony’s conviction was vindication after a nearly four-year struggle to prove they’d been ripped off. Over the course of a 12-day trial, government prosecutors had convinced a jury that Karony and his co-conspirator had lied about SafeMoon’s features and finances, while extracting as much as $200 million in what could be described as a “slow rug-pull.” Read more: SafeMoon CEO branded ‘remorseless liar’ in explosive closing argument Now Karony faces as long as 45 years in prison — though his sentence is likely to be much less. Indeed, former FTX head Sam Bankman-Fried only got 25 years for a fraud nearly 50 times larger. That’s just one index of SafeMoon’s relative insignificance. Most crypto veterans regarded it as a bit of a joke even at release, and its dramatic collapse under scandalous fraud allegations was overshadowed by larger and more shocking frauds, like Three Arrows Capital, Celsius, and the aforementioned FTX. However, the SafeMoon saga, in all its low-rent absurdity, bitter infighting, grandiose delusion, and sheer incompetence, may be a better encapsulation of crypto’s maximum-fraud era than those slick, respectable-looking cons. If Su Zhu and Alex Mashinsky flew too close to…
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