US charges fugitive crypto exec Do Kwon with eight counts of fraud

Do Kwon, the founder of Terraform Labs, has been charged with multiple counts of fraud, including wire fraud, securities fraud, commodities fraud, and conspiracy to defraud and manipulate markets, by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. The charges were filed following Kwon’s arrest in Montenegro on Thursday. Prosecutors have stated that they will seek Kwon’s extradition. Yonhap News has reported that South Korean national police are awaiting fingerprint confirmation that the arrested individual is indeed Do Kwon.

The collapse of the Terra/Luna algorithmic stablecoin ecosystem last year was one of the early events in the cryptocurrency industry’s downturn. The US Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that the collapse was due to a massive fraud that caused the loss of over $40 billion in value. Kwon has been sought by prosecutors in the United States and South Korea, and reports suggest that Interpol issued a “red notice” for his arrest. Despite Kwon’s claims on Twitter that he was not “on the run,” authorities have been searching for him.

According to Yonhap News, the South Korean national police have confirmed that the person arrested in Montenegro is indeed Do Kwon. They checked the individual’s identification card and confirmed his name, nationality, and age with photo data. The arrest of Kwon and the charges against him represent a significant development in the cryptocurrency industry’s ongoing struggle to regulate itself and root out fraud and other forms of wrongdoing.