A man in the United States has been sentenced to 23 years in prison for orchestrating a $20 million cryptocurrency scam.

BlockBeats News, April 17th. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Texas man Robert Dunlap was sentenced by federal judge LaShonda A. Hunt to 23 years in prison for orchestrating a cryptocurrency scam and defrauding nearly 1,000 investors of over $20 million. He was also ordered to pay restitution to the victims.

Between 2018 and 2023, Dunlap claimed to operate a cryptocurrency company and sold a fake digital asset called "Meta-1 Coin" through the "Meta-1 Coin Trust." He spread multiple false statements to potential and actual investors, alleging that the token was backed by art worth up to $1 billion and $440 billion in gold, and falsely claimed that an accounting firm had audited the gold and certified its value. The supposed art collection was said to include works by renowned artists such as Picasso, Dalí, and Van Gogh. To conceal the fact that he did not actually possess the gold or art, Dunlap fabricated a set of legal documents.