Amalgam Founder Charged With Running ‘Sham Blockchain’, Taking $1M From Investors

Prosecutors have charged Jeremy Jordan-Jones, the self-styled founding father of a now-defunct crypto startup referred to as Amalgam, with fraud, alleging that he swindled traders in his “sham blockchain” of greater than $1 million, utilizing the cash to fund a lavish life-style.

According to prosecutors, Jordan-Jones painted Amalgam as a tech firm that created blockchain-based point-of-sale fee programs, which he claimed had multi-million-dollar partnerships with sports activities groups together with the Golden State Warriors and an expert soccer group in England’s Premier League, in addition to an enormous restaurant conglomerate with greater than 500 eating places. None of those partnerships existed, prosecutors stated. Jordan-Jones additionally allegedly solicited investments from would-be traders by telling them the cash could be used to facilitate the itemizing of Amalgam’s non-existent crypto token on a crypto alternate.

While allegedly spinning tales for traders — together with a enterprise capital agency, recognized in a 2022 Forbes article as Brown Venture Group — prosecutors say Jordan-Jones was blowing their cash on an opulent life-style for himself, together with “hotels and restaurants in Miami,” automotive funds, and designer clothes.

“Jordan-Jones, capitalizing on the publicity around blockchain technology, perpetrated a brazen scheme to defraud investors,” stated U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton in a Tuesday press announcement. “He touted his company as a groundbreaking blockchain startup, backed by high-profile partnerships. In reality, Jordan-Jones’s company was a sham, and investors’ funds were siphoned off to bankroll his lavish lifestyle. This should be an example to would-be financial fraudsters that the women and men of the Southern District and the FBI are watching and to the investing public that fraudsters often use the promise of new technology to cloak their schemes.”

Additionally, prosecutors have accused Jordan-Jones of offering falsified paperwork to a monetary establishment, which he used to fraudulently receive a company bank card, working up a $350,000 steadiness earlier than the financial institution closed his account.

Jordan-Jones has been charged with one depend every of wire fraud, securities fraud, making false statements to a monetary establishment and aggravated id theft — costs which carry a mixed most sentence of 82 years in jail. The aggravated id theft cost carries a compulsory minimal sentence of two years.