From Crypto Darling to Fraudster: 12 Months Behind Bars for $3.5M Scam
Crypto's latest cautionary tale just got a prison sentence.
Once hailed as a rising star, this blockchain hustler turned predator now faces a year in jail—proving even decentralized finance has zero tolerance for old-school grift.
The Setup: Promised moon returns, delivered handcuffs.
The Takedown: Authorities sliced through the web3 smokescreen—turns out 'trustless' systems still punish thieves.
The Irony: A $3.5M heist nets less time than some SEC paperwork violations. Priorities, right?
Another 'genius' learns the hard way: blockchain's transparency cuts both ways. Maybe try traditional banking next time—those guys get golden parachutes when they fleece customers.
How The Scheme Worked
Prosecutors say Parks posed as companies like “MultiMillionaire LLC” and “CP3O LLC” to convince cloud providers to hand over larger compute allotments.
Between January and August 2021, the stolen capacity was used to mine nearly $1million worth of Ether, Litecoin, and Monero.
The DOJ also said Parks laundered proceeds through exchanges, an NFT marketplace, payment processors and banks, and that some of the money paid for a Mercedes-Benz, jewelry and first-class travel.
Today the US Attorney’s Office, Eastern Dist. of NY unsealed an indictment charging Charles O. Parks III a.k.a. “CP3O”, with operating a large-scale illegal cryptojacking op
He defrauded cloud comp. services out of $3.5mil+ worth of computing resources to mine crypto worth $1mil pic.twitter.com/geXt5BKax6
— jerbz (@JerbztheGreat) April 16, 2024
The defendant pleaded guilty to wire fraud in December, avoiding longer charges that could have carried far stiffer sentences.
An April 2024 indictment named accounts tied to a subsidiary of a Seattle-based cloud and electronics firm and a Redmond-based computing company as among those defrauded.
Authorities described the total value of computing resources taken in the scheme as more than $3.5 million.
Bigger Picture On Crypto Crime
The Parks case arrived alongside reports of large user losses from scams. Blockchain watchers flagged a $3 million USDT phishing loss recently, and security firm data show roughly $2.50 billion lost to hacks, scams and breaches in the first half of 2025.
Wallet breaches accounted for nearly $2 billion across 34 incidents, while phishing attacks totaled over $400 million across 132 events, according to those industry figures.
The Q2 + H1 2025 Hack3d Report is here.
$2.47B lost in the first half of the year. $801M lost in Q2 alone. Phishing and wallet compromise dominated the threat landscape.
Dive into the data
pic.twitter.com/Sxa6AGejGK
— CertiK (@CertiK) June 30, 2025
Why Cloud Providers Were VulnerableCloud services rent huge amounts of CPU and GPU time, and attackers who gain elevated access can run mining rigs at scale while bills pile up in the providers’ ledgers.
In this case, the miners converted compute into cryptocurrency that prosecutors say funded a luxury lifestyle. The DOJ framed the case as a clear example of how tech access and lax vetting can be abused for profit.
The sentencing included forfeiture of $500,000 and the car; final restitution numbers will be decided later.
Officials, including New York City Police Department commissioner Jessica S. Tisch, stressed that the case shows the real-world impact of tech fraud and illegal mining.
Featured image from The Boar, chart from TradingView
