15 years in prison in the US

The verdict was issued by Paul A. Engelmayer, judge of the Manhattan District Court (USA), on December 11. He mentioned that Do Kwon repeatedly lied to investors who trusted their life savings to the project.

“This is a fraud on a huge scale, affecting an entire generation. In the history of federal prosecutions, rarely has any fraud caused so much damage,” Judge Engelmayer said.

Wearing yellow prison clothes, Kwon addressed the court and apologized to the victims, including hundreds of people who sent letters to the court about the harm they suffered. “All of their stories are very heartbreaking and once again remind me of the great loss I caused. I want to apologize to the victims,” ​​Kwon said.

Ayyildiz Attila, one of hundreds of people who sent letters, said he lost about $400,000-500,000 in the scam. “My savings, future and years of achievements were gone. I struggled to pay bills and shoulder responsibilities. Everything I had ever built was wiped away,” Attila shared.

Sean Hecker, Kwon’s attorney, said in an email after the sentencing that Do Kwon expressed remorse and would work to atone.

In August, the Korean cryptocurrency businessman pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to defraud and wire fraud. “I made false and misleading statements about the reason the rate was adjusted, by not disclosing the role of a trading company in adjusting that rate. What I did was wrong,” the person said.

Kwon is the founder of Terraform Labs, the project behind Luna and TerraUSD. In May 2022, the price of two tokens dropped to almost all of their value, leaving many players empty-handed. According to the prosecutor’s investigation, when TerraUSD fell below 1 USD, Kwon told investors that the computer algorithm “Terra Protocol” restored the value of the coin. However, in reality this person arranged for a high-frequency trading company to secretly buy millions of dollars of this token to artificially raise the price.

Last year, Kwon agreed to pay $80 million in civil fines and was banned from trading cryptocurrencies.

Kwon also faces charges in South Korea. According to the plea agreement, prosecutors will not object if Kwon requests to be transferred abroad after serving half of his sentence in the US.