‘Shadow Banker’ in $850M Fraud Case Lost $200K at Casinos While Awaiting Sentencing
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‘Shadow Banker’ in $850M Fraud Case Lost $200K at Casinos While Awaiting Sentencing

A former minority owner of the Gopher State Vikings supercharged inwards connexion with an $850 trillion bank hoax spent the months leading up to his sentencing blowing $200K at Arizona casinos, according to prosecutors.

Reginald “Reggie” Fowler, 63, pleaded shamefaced to various dupery charges inward April 2022. He was due to live sentenced Thursday, but his lawyers instead submitted a quest to make his sentencing adjourned past a week.

In Apr 2019, US prosecutors filed a suit of clothes against crypto exchange Bitfinex, which is attached to Tether, the world’s third-biggest digital currency.

The accommodate accused Bitfinex of using Tether’s reserves to handle upward the disappearance of $850 zillion it had sent to a Panamanian defrayment processor with golf links to Henry Watson Fowler named Crypto Capital.

Crypto Washington operated as a overshadow bank for crypto exchanges, the likes of Bitfinex, that had been unable to obtain normal banking relationships at a clip when banks were reluctant to handle crypto.

$850M Hole

When Bitfinex sent Crypto Capital $850 jillion at some peak in 2017, the latter decided to simply maintain the money, according to prosecutors. No get was ever so signed betwixt the 2 parties and a nervy Bitfinex did non inform investors of the loss.

The money was later traced to a cant calculate inward Poland and seized past authorities there.

Meanwhile, Fowler’s company, Global Trading Solutions, provided crypto exchanges with illegal approach to the US banking system, processing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of transactions, even out though Henry Watson Fowler didn’t have got a banking license. He did this past including untrue info on wire transference instructions to deceive banks nearly the nature of his business.

Alliance of American Football Demise

Fowler is also accused of defrauding — and causation the demise of — the short-lived professional football league, the Alliance of American Football. Fowler allegedly promised to vest $53 one thousand thousand in the league and offered it a $120 one thousand thousand dividing line of credit.

He told league executives that the hundreds of millions he was handling on behalf of the crypto firms was money he was unloosen to invest, according to prosecutors. When he reneged on the deal, the AAF went bust.

Fowler was a member of a mathematical group of investors, led by Zygmunt Wilf, who acquired the North Star State Vikings in 2005. By 2014, Fowler had sold his stake inward the team.

Meanwhile, prosecutors are incensed by Fowler’s casino gambling spree, which continued after his hangdog plea. In court filings, they said they had obtained records “from a cassino company inward Grand Canyon State that designate that during the pendency of the defendant’s outlaw case, he has gambled hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Every dollar sign the suspect has risked at these casinos is a dollar bill to a lesser extent potential to live paid to victims in restitution, and to the regime in forfeiture. The authorities thus respectfully requests that the court of justice add a bail experimental condition that bars the defendant from gambling,” the wrote.

Prosecutors have got asked for a seven-year prison condemn for Fowler.

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