According to breaking news, Terra (LUNA) scammer Do Kwon has been sentenced to 15 years in prison in the US.
The verdict, handed down by Judge Paul Engelmeyer in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) Federal Court, exceeded the 12 years requested by prosecutors and significantly longer than the five years proposed by the defense. Kwon will be eligible to apply for transfer to South Korea after serving at least half of his sentence in the United States, where he will face additional charges.
The court hearing concluded with a lengthy session in which victims affected by the collapse of the Terra ecosystem testified both in court and by telephone. Kwon had pleaded guilty in August to two separate charges encompassing commodity fraud, securities fraud, and electronic fraud in connection with fraudulent activities at Terraform Labs. In his testimony to Judge Engelmeyer, he admitted to knowingly defrauding investors in the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin.
As part of a plea agreement reached in the summer, Kwon's nine previous charges, which carried a potential total sentence of 135 years, were reduced to two. While this lowered the maximum sentence to 25 years, prosecutors agreed to propose a 12-year prison sentence as part of the deal. They also pledged to support Kwon's request for international transfer to South Korea after serving half of his sentence.
However, Judge Engelmeyer did not hide her concerns about Kwon's potential extradition to South Korea. The judge questioned what “assurance” the U.S. would receive that Kwon would not be released early, and posed further questions to both prosecutors and defense attorneys regarding the status of Kwon's current charges in South Korea and how the 17 months he spent in Montenegro before extradition to the U.S. would affect his sentence.
*This is not investment advice.