Austin Michael Taylor, the man behind CluCoin and CLU, just admitted to screwing over investors. The crime? Pocketing $1.14 million from CluCoin investors and blowing it all on online gambling.
Taylor knew exactly what he was doing when he launched CluCoin, according to the SEC. He had a pretty decent social media following, so he decided to hype up CLU.
If you’ve been in the crypto space for more than five minutes, you know the drill—ICO, white paper, the whole shebang.
Taylor sold investors on the idea that CLU’s ICO would be something special, even going as far as promising it had a charitable focus. People bought in, and on May 19, 2021, CluCoin’s ICO went live.
After securing that sweet investor cash, Taylor didn’t stick to just the token. He started talking up new projects like NFTs, a video game, and even a metaverse platform.
But things started getting sketchy when Taylor decided to host an event called “NFTCon: Into the Metaverse” in Miami. The whole thing went down on April 4 and 5, 2022, in a hotel.
Taylor wanted to keep that hype train rolling and was pushing for more investment in CLU and everything tied to CluCoin. Right after this event, things took a nosedive.
By May 2022, Taylor had figured out a way to get his hands on the funds in the cryptocurrency address where investor money was flowing.
And guess what? Instead of putting that money into any of the projects he promised, he transferred about $1.14 million straight to his personal account.
Not for anything legit, though. Taylor then took that money and blew it at multiple online casinos between May and December of that year, losing every single dollar.
Now, Taylor is facing the music. He’s got a sentencing hearing scheduled for October 31 at 10:00 A.M., where U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Becerra will decide his fate. The maximum sentence he’s looking at is twenty years in federal prison.
Taylor’s legal team will probably argue for leniency, pointing to his lack of a previous criminal record or maybe even claiming he got caught up in the gambling addiction.
But that’s not going to change the fact that he stole from people who trusted him with their money. The court will also consider the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, but those are just a starting point. Judge Becerra will weigh all the factors before handing down the sentence.
