Interpol introduced this night the arrest of Kwon Do-hyeong, also referred to as Do Kwon, a disgraced crypto fugitive.
Crypto fugitive Do Kwon arrested in Montenegro, says inside minister https://t.co/pl9PshdPNb
— Monetary Instances (@FT) March 23, 2023
Do Kwon is the founding father of TerraUSD stablecoin and Luna, two digital currencies that misplaced an estimated $40 billion final yr.
Interpol apprehended Kwon, 31, and one other individual of curiosity at an airport in Montenegro. Based on the Inside Ministry there, the 2 have been utilizing solid paperwork to journey to Dubai.
Because the Minister of Inside @filip_adzic, introduced earlier right this moment, two residents, Kwon Do Hyeong and Hon Chang Joon, have been apprehended and delivered to the Fundamental State Prosecutor’s Workplace in Podgorica, on prison fees for the prison offense of doc forgery below (1/3) pic.twitter.com/iS0rRs2Fwv
— mupCG (@MupCg) March 23, 2023
“He was arrested on the airport with counterfeit documentation and is needed by a number of international locations, together with the USA, South Korea, and Singapore,” Montenegrin Inner Affairs Minister Filip Adžić wrote in a Fb put up.
The arrest is the end result of a global months-long seek for Do Kwon. South Korea had requested Interpol to challenge a “purple discover,” which permits different international locations to arrest Kwon.
Based on the New York Times, U.S. prosecutors within the Southern District of New York filed prison fees towards Mr. Kwon a number of hours after his arrest. The costs embody wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy to defraud and have interaction in market manipulation.
Who’s Do Kwon?
Kwon graduated from Stanford and briefly labored at Apple earlier than designing his two cryptocurrencies. TerraUSD was a “stablecoin,” supposed to take care of a relentless value of $1, whereas Luna’s worth fluctuated.
Between 2021 and early 2022, Luna was valued at $40 billion. Kwon turned extensively fashionable. His followers known as themselves “Lunatics.”
However Luna in the end crashed—its worth cleaned in a single day. The crash induced a domino impact on different fashionable cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Quickly after, Kwon went into hiding.
Kwon claimed on Twitter that he was “not on the run.”
I’m not “on the run” or something related – for any authorities company that has proven curiosity to speak, we’re in full cooperation and we do not have something to cover
— Do Kwon ? (@stablekwon) September 17, 2022
However based on CNN, a South Korean courtroom issued an arrest warrant for Kwon final September. He was believed to be in Serbia.
