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Onetime cryptocurrency mogul Do Kwon was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison after a $40 billion crash revealed his crypto ecosystem to be a fraud. Victims said the 34-year-old financial technology whiz weaponized their trust to convince them that the investment secretly propped up by cash infusions was safe. Kwon, a Stanford graduate known by some as the cryptocurrency king, apologized after listening as victims one in court and others by telephone described the scams toll: wiping out nest eggs, depleting charities and wrecking lives. One told the judge in a letter that he contemplated suicide after his father lost his retirement money in the scheme. Judge Paul A. Engelmayer said at a daylong sentencing hearing in Manhattan federal court that the governments recommendation of 12 years in prison was unreasonably lenient and that the defenses request for five years was utterly unthinkable and wildly unreasonable. Kwon faced a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. Your offense caused real people to lose $40 billion in real money, not some paper loss, Engelmayer told Kwon, who sat at the defense table in a yellow jail suit. The judge called it a fraud on an epic, generational scale and said Kwon had an almost mystical hold on investors and caused incalculable human wreckage. More than the combined losses in FTX and OneCoin cases Kwon pleaded guilty in August to fraud charges stemming from the collapse of Terraform Labs, the Singapore-based firm he co-founded in 2018. The loss exceeded the combined losses from FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and OneCoin co-founder Karl Sebastian Greenwoods frauds, prosecutors said. Engelmayer estimated there may have been a million victims. Terraform Labs had touted its TerraUSD as a reliable stablecoin a kind of currency typically pegged to stable assets to prevent drastic fluctuations in prices. But prosecutors say it was an illusion backed by outside cash infusions that came crumbling down after it plunged far below its $1 peg. The crash devastated investors in TerraUSD and its floating sister currency, Luna, triggering a cascade of crises that swept through cryptocurrency markets. Kwon tried to rebuild Terraform Labs in Singapore before fleeing to the Balkans on a false passport, prosecutors said. Hes been locked up since his March 2023 arrest in Montenegro. He was credited for 17 months he spent in jail there before being extradited to the U.S. Kwon agreed to forfeit over $19 million as part of his plea deal. His lawyers argued his conduct stemmed not from greed, but hubris and desperation. Engelmayer rejected his request to serve his sentence in his native South Korea, where he also faces prosecution and where his wife and 4-year-old daughter live. I have spent almost every waking moment of the last few years thinking of what I could have done different and what I can do now to make things right, Kwon told Engelmayer. Hearing from victims, he said, was harrowing and reminded me again of the great losses that I have caused. Victims say losses ruined their lives, harmed charities One victim, speaking by telephone, said his wife divorced him, his sons had to skip college, and he had to move back to Croatia to live with his parents after TerraUSDs crash evaporated his familys life savings. Another said he has to live with the guilt of persuading his in-laws and hundreds of nonprofit organizations to invest. Stanislav Trofimchuk said his familys investment plummeted from $190,000 to $13,000 17 years of our life, gone during what he described as two weeks of sheer terror. Chauncey St. John, speaking in court, said some nonprofits he worked with lost more than $2 million and a church group lost about $900,000. He and his wife are saddled with debt and his in-laws have been forced to work well past their planned retirement, he said. Nevertheless, St. John said, he forgives Kwon and I pray to God to have mercy on his soul. A prosecutor read excerpts from some of more than 300 letters submitted by victims, including a person identified only by initials who lost nearly $11,400 while juggling bills and trying to complete college. Kwon had made Terra seem like a safe place to stash savings, the person said. To some that is just a number on a page, but to me it was years of effort, the person wrote. Watching it evaporate, literally overnight, was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. What happened was not an accident. It was not a market event. It was deception, the person added, imploring the judge to consider the human cost of this tragedy. Kwon created an illusion of resilience while covering up systemic failure, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Mortazavi told Engelmayer. This was fraud executed with arrogance, manipulation and total disregard for people. Michael R. Sisak, Associated Press Associated Press reporter Anthony Izaguirre contributed to this report.
Category:
E-Commerce
A federal appeals court on Thursday backed a ruling that held Apple in civil contempt for brazenly defying an order designed to open its iPhone app store to other payment systems besides its own, but the decision also reopened a door for the company to collect commission from the rival options. The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals mostly validated a scalding contempt order issued in April by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers for violating a key part of her September 2021 findings in a legal battle instigated by video game maker Epic Games. But the Ninth Circuit’s 54-page decision overturned one key part of Gonzalez Rogers’ civil contempt crackdown that prohibited Apple from collecting commissions when consumers make an e-commerce purchase within an iPhone app through a payment systems that operate outside of Apple’s control. The appeals judges decided the ban that would have prevented Apple from imposing fees on rival payment options was too severe and ordered Gonzalez Rogers to reopen the case to determine a fair commission rate that the Cupertino, California, company, can charge. The ruling provided some general guidelines for how Gonzalez Rogers might determine a fair commission on external payment systems, but didn’t make any suggestions about what the percentage might be. Neither Apple nor Epic immediately responded for requests for comment late Thursday. But the appeals decision agreed Apple had made a mockery of Gonzalez Rogers attempt to create more payment competition in the iPhone app store as part of a case that began in 2020. Thats when Epic, the maker of the Fortnite video game, filed a lawsuit alleging Apple had set up a price-gouging system within the iPhone app store that had turned into an illegal monopoly. Epic’s case targeted Apple’s iron-clad control over all its devices and software an approach that has become known as the company’s walled garden. As part of the strategy, Apple required all in-app purchases on iPhones to be made through its own payment processing system while collecting commissions ranging from 15% to 30%. Those commissions have become a huge moneymaker within a services division that brings in more than $100 billion in annual revenue for Apple. Although Gonzalez Rogers rejected Epic’s assertion that the iPhone app store had turned into an illegal monopoly in her 2021 decision, she ordered Apple to allow links to alternative payment options to be displayed within apps. Apple continued to fight the alternative payment option in appeals before being rebuffed by the U.S. Supreme Court in January 2024. The company then announced it would charge commissions ranging from 12% to 27% on iPhone app purchases made on alternative payment options rates that remained so high that few developers decided to offer other choices. That prompted Epic to allege Apple was in contempt of court, a claim Gonzalez Rogers embraced after a series of testy court hearings last year and earlier this year that led her to conclude the company’s efforts to allow alternative payment systems into the iPhone app store was little more than a sham. Michael Liedtke, AP technology writer
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E-Commerce
Ford Motor Co. has stepped up technology in its popular F-150 pickup to combat the ever-evolving techniques car thieves have at their disposal.It is the latest cat-and-mouse move that the automaker hopes will help customers avoid the costly and frustrating process that occurs when vehicles are swiped and includes a feature that won’t allow an engine to start even if a key fob is in the pickup.Motor vehicle thefts recently have been on the decline in the U.S. after several years of increases. Still, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that more than 850,000 vehicles were stolen in the U.S. in 2024, pegging losses at $8 billion.But thefts dropped 23% during the first six months of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024, according to an analysis by the National Insurance Crime Bureau.Ford’s F-150 was in the top 10 of most stolen models.“F-150s have been the bestselling vehicle for decades, so there are a lot of them on the road,” said Christian Moran, Ford Secure general manager. “Thieves do like to go after pickup trucks. They also like to go after the contents that are often in pickup trucks. Oftentimes, there are people who have thousands of dollars worth of tools and products in the back that are valuable above and beyond what the vehicle is worth.”Ford’s Stolen Vehicle Services, which was launched with the 2024 F-150 model year, added a “Start Inhibit” feature that allows owners to disable an F-150’s engine from a smartphone by using the FordPass app. This makes it impossible for a thief to start the pickup.That was expanded in the 2025 model year to include the F-250 Super Duty pickup. Ford plans to extend it to other vehicles in the 2026 model year.The security package comes with the purchase of a pickup and is included for one year once activated. The cost after the first year is $7.99 per month. Technology matching wits with thieves F-150 owners can receive alerts to their smartphones of potential thefts that include an unauthorized person entering their pickup, whether doors are ajar and if the vehicle is moved or towed.One of the strongest features of the security package is the coordination with police agencies, Moran said.It works this way. Once an owner realizes or is notified that their pickup has been stolen, the owner is encouraged to call police and file a report. The owner then contacts a Ford call center, which confirms with police that a theft report was completed. The call center coordinates efforts with police to use “Start Inhibit” to shut down the engine and to pinpoint where the pickup stopped.“Usually, within an hour is when we try to work as hard as we can to get those vehicles,” said Officer Ibrahim Kakish, a member of the Detroit police commercial auto theft section. “The sooner we get the vehicle, the better. The vehicle is more likely to be intact.” Security measures up, thefts trending down Auto theft is lucrative as some vehicles, especially high-end and luxury models, are targeted for resale. Other stolen vehicles are used to commit crimes like carjackings and smash-and-grab robberies at jewelry, liquor and other retail stores.“We used to say most of the people stealing cars were joyriders,” said Thomas Burke, a retired New York City police detective and a current director with the Chesapeake, Virginia-based International Association of Auto Theft Investigators.“There are very few joyriders, now,” Burke added. “It’s all professional. They steal them, change the (vehicle identification) numbers and sell them.”Thieves seek out easy targets like key fobs left in vehicles. They also break into a vehicle to reprogram its computer to accept another key, Burke said.But it appears security measures are working.“In New York in 1990, we had 196,000 cars stolen in one year,” Burke said. “This year, so far, a little over 10,000 have been stolen, and that’s out of more than 3.5 million cars registered.”Motor vehicle theft in Detroit decreased from 9,260 in 2023 to 8,408 last year, according to the city’s police department. So far this year, there have been 1,837 fewer thefts than in 2024.“We’re finding out ways that they’re stealing vehicles, and we work with companies to try to get that stopped,” Kakish said. Corey Williams, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
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