In brief
- Former lobbyist Jack Abramoff was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay $2.2 million in restitution for his “AML Bitcoin” fraud scheme.
- Abramoff and CEO Marcus Andrade spent ICO funds on personal expenses and made false claims about government contracts and a Super Bowl ad.
- Judge spared him prison time due to his guilty plea, testimony against Andrade, and aggressive cancer diagnosis.
Former lobbyist Jack Abramoff was sentenced to three years of federal probation for his involvement in a scheme tied to a project called AML Bitcoin.
Abramoff has also been ordered to pay $2.2 million in restitution to victims of the scheme. Abramoff is most famously known outside the crypto industry for his conviction in a 2006 tribal casino lobbying scandal, for which he served four years in prison.
The judge explained that he was not sentencing Abramoff to serve more prison time because of his early guilty plea, testimony against AML Bitcoin CEO Marcus Andrade, and an aggressive cancer diagnosis.
“There’s very little prospect of reoffending here,” Federal Judge Richard Seeborg said during the hearing.
Abramoff and Andrade were charged in 2020 for fraud connected to the $5 million initial coin offering for the project. The pair are said to have spent money raised through selling tokens related to the project on personal expenses, including two properties in Texas. They also falsely claimed that AML Bitcoin had contracts pending with government agencies that wanted to adopt its technology.
Federal prosecutors said Andrade claimed the project’s technology would prevent money laundering and anonymous use through “biometric technologies.”
According to the Department of Justice, Abramoff and Andrade falsely claimed that a commercial for the project was going to air during the 2018 Super Bowl broadcast, but then they claimed it had been rejected by the network.
“In fact, as Abramoff and Andrade knew, the NAC Foundation did not have the funds to purchase the advertising time, did not intend to air the television commercial, and the advertisement was not reviewed or rejected by the television network or the NFL,” the DOJ said in a statement at the time.
But Abramoff and Andrade still used op-ed articles, social media, and AML Bitcoin press releases to claim they’d been victims of the network’s unfair rejection of their ad.
Andrade was sentenced in July to serve seven years in prison.
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