FBI gets alleged $165 million crypto Ponzi scheme mastermind back after year-long Fiji escape
Edward Zimbardi has been returned to the US after being deported from Fiji, placing the alleged mastermind of a $165 million crypto investment scheme back inside attain of federal prosecutors.
A federal grand jury in Georgia indicted Zimbardi on July 8 on 12 counts of wire fraud, 12 counts of cash laundering, and one depend of conspiracy to commit cash laundering, the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia said.
Prosecutors allege Zimbardi operated The Crypto Program from June 2022 by way of August 2023, promoting promoting packages that promised traders assured month-to-month returns of 25%.
Thousands of traders despatched greater than $165 million in cryptocurrency to wallets secretly managed by Zimbardi, prosecutors stated.
Rather than utilizing the cash as marketed, Zimbardi allegedly directed greater than $34 million into high-risk international foreign money buying and selling, used funds from newer traders to pay earlier members, and spent a minimum of $10 million on private bills.
Those bills allegedly included luxurious autos, a house for his son, and alimony funds.
The cost construction kinds the premise of the federal government’s Ponzi scheme allegation, with prosecutors claiming returns paid to earlier members had been funded by cash from later traders relatively than earnings generated by the enterprise.
California regulators had already moved in opposition to the operation whereas it was energetic.
In June 2023, the state’s Department of Financial Protection and Innovation ordered The Crypto Program to cease providing the funding packages, discovering they had been unqualified securities and that traders had been given materially deceptive info.
The alleged scheme ended about two months later.
The Justice Department stated Zimbardi fled to Fiji in July 2025 after studying that the FBI was investigating him. Fijian authorities deported him to the US on Aug. 14, 2026, in coordination with the FBI and State Department.
His return closes the worldwide section of the case and clears the best way for prosecutors to pursue the fees in Georgia.
Zimbardi was scheduled to look earlier than a federal Justice of the Peace choose in Los Angeles on Aug. 17, with prosecutors searching for to maintain him detained pending additional proceedings. The Justice Department had not disclosed the end result of that listening to in its newest assertion.
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