Sohrab Sharma get 8 Years Behinds Bars for Leading Fraudulent ICO Campaign Promoted by Floyd Mayweather

By: Dickson Arinze

March 6, 2021 2:07 AM

Centra Techs co-founder Sohrab Sharma has been sentenced to 8 years in prison for his key role in a 2017 ICO scam. 

The co-founder who's Initial Coin Offering scheme was led by the face of legendary boxer Floyd Mayweather in 2017. The fraudulent scheme duped investors over $25 million.

Sharma who previously pled guilty to a 3 count charge of securities fraud, mail fraud and wire fraud for his tricky scheme along with various co-conspirators to ask investors to participate in the fraudulent scheme.

IIan Graff, a U.S attorney portrayed Sharma as having "led a scheme set up to deceive investors by falsely asserting that the start-up he co-founder had developed a fully functioning, cutting-edge cryptocurrency-related financial products."

Sharma's most notable investions were his forgery mastery in creating fake executives, fake business partnerships and boasting of fake licenses that he used along with his co-conspirators into tricking his victims into investing millions of dollars.

In July 2017, Sharma along with co-defendants Raymond Trapani and Robert Farkas founded Centra with claims the firm will offer digital assets related product along with a crypto debit card. Centra ICO lasted for 4 months from July 2017 to October 2017, Sharma and co-defendants distributed unlicensed securities withing those period in form of CTR tokens to investors.

In a bid to promote their fraudulent offering, they published false claims of a partnership with Visa, Mastercard and Bancorp. They went further claiming they have acquired a money transmitter licence in 38 U.S. states, the group out up a CEO with a false identity claiming to boast more than 20 years experience in the banking sector and a MBA from Havard University.

The group raise a total of $25 million at the end of the ICO scheme from investors, authorities later found out that those crypto assets collected were worth more than $60 million at some point in 2018.

U.S. authorities seized 100,000 Ether from Centra which the U.S. Marshals sold for an estimated $33.4 million earlier this year. Proceeds from the sale will be used to compensate victims of the scheme.

Celebrity figures Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled promoted the scheme on their social media in 2017 has agreed to six-figure settlements after investors filed a lawsuit against the pair.

Centra co-founder Robert Farkas was also sentenced to one year in prison for the role he played in the scheme. Trapani has also pleaded guilty. However,  Sharma who had been ordered to forfeit $36 million, has also been sentenced to three years of supervised release.