The Rap Sheet
25 ARTICLESCrypto's most notorious criminals. Arrested, indicted, fugitive, or still tweeting.
Ross Ulbricht: The Dread Pirate Roberts
Built the world's first darknet marketplace. Got life in prison. Then got pardoned by Trump.
Mark Karpelès: The Man Who Lost 850,000 Bitcoin
Ran Mt. Gox, the world's largest Bitcoin exchange, straight into the ground.
Ruja Ignatova: The Cryptoqueen
Scammed $4 billion with a fake cryptocurrency. Vanished from the face of the Earth.
Alexander Vinnik: The BTC-e Laundromat
Ran a $4 billion crypto laundering operation. Washed 95% of all ransomware. Pled guilty in the US. Then Trump sent him home to Russia.
Zhimin Qian: The Goddess of Wealth
Ran a $6.6 billion Ponzi in China. Fled on a moped. Hid 61,000 BTC. Tried to become a queen. Literally.
Lazarus Group: North Korea's Crypto Army
A state-sponsored hacking unit that has stolen over $6 billion in crypto to fund a nuclear program.
Satish Kumbhani: BitConnect's Phantom
Ran the $2.4 billion BitConnect Ponzi scheme. Disappeared before the FBI could knock.
Fatih Özer: The Man Who Robbed Turkey and Ran
Ran Turkey's largest exchange. Stole $2 billion. Fled to Albania. Got 11,196 years. Found dead in his cell.
Lichtenstein & Razzlekhan: The Bitfinex Bonnie & Clyde
A tech bro and his rapper wife hid $4.5 billion in stolen Bitcoin. Got caught by their own OpSec fails.
Sam Bankman-Fried: The $8 Billion Fraud
Crypto's golden boy stole billions in customer funds. Got 25 years. Played League of Legends through it all.
Su Zhu & Kyle Davies: Three Arrows Capital
Ran crypto's most arrogant hedge fund. Blew up $3.5 billion. Su Zhu tried to flee by sea.
Do Kwon: The $40 Billion Vaporizer
Created LUNA/UST. Told critics they were poor. Destroyed $40 billion. Sentenced to 15 years.
Alex Mashinsky: Celsius's Lying Machine
Promised 'unbank yourself.' Gambled depositor funds. Lost $4.7 billion. Got 12 years.
CZ Zhao: Binance's $4.3 Billion Fine
Built the world's biggest crypto exchange. Pleaded guilty. Served 4 months. Got pardoned by Trump. Now advises governments.
Justin Sun: The Teflon Troll of Crypto
SEC charged. Investigated everywhere. Still free. Still tweeting. The most unkillable man in crypto.
Roger Ver: Bitcoin Jesus Falls From Grace
The original Bitcoin evangelist. Renounced US citizenship. Paid $49.9M to make it go away.
Axiom Exchange: The Insider Trading Exposé That Broke Polymarket
ZachXBT tweeted five sentences. $39.7 million in prediction bets followed. Then he named Axiom and published the receipts.
Jonathan Spalletta: The Collectibles Collector Who Killed Uranium Finance
Stole $54M from Uranium Finance. Spent it on Magic cards, Roman coins, and Pokémon. Created a Telegram 'War Room' to pretend to investigate his own hack. Got caught anyway.
Robert Dunlap: 23 Years for the $44B Gold Lie
Sold a coin he said was backed by Picassos and $44 billion in gold. Got 23 years.
The SEE Crew: $263M Stolen on Discord
They met online gaming. They stole $263M. They spent it on Lamborghinis and $500K nightclub tabs. Now they're going to prison one by one.
Operation Level Up: The DOJ Walked Into the Compounds
DOJ and FBI dismantled the pig butchering scam compounds. 276 arrests. $701M seized. Cambodia just passed its first dedicated anti-scam-center law.
France: 88 Indicted in the Wrench Attack Sweep
France just charged 88 people, including ten minors, in the global crypto kidnapping epidemic. The country has become the wrench attack capital of the world.
Rathnakishore Giri: 9 Years for a $10M Bitcoin Lie
The Ohio investment manager who drove Lamborghinis while running a $10M Ponzi scheme got nine years. He kept scamming after pleading guilty.
Dritan Kapllani: The Teen Who Screen-Shared $19M
An 18-year-old US teen allegedly stole $19M in crypto, then flexed Lambos and Rolexes on Instagram. His band-for-band Discord call blew the whole operation.
AlphaRaccoon: The Google Engineer Who Rigged Polymarket for $1.2M
A Google engineer saw GOOGLE CONFIDENTIAL in red text. He clicked through it anyway. Then bet $2.75 million using what he found inside.