Atlantan movie producer pleads guilty for promoting fraudulent crypto investment scheme FLiK

The United States Department of Justice has recently charged an Atlanta film producer for wire fraud and money laundering along with the promotion of fraudulent crypto investment schemes. The producer, who pleaded guilty to the DOJ, has defrauded investors of more than $2.5 million. According to an official statement, Ryan Felton supported an initial coin offering (ICO) for a streaming platform FLiK in 2017.

Felton made multiple false claims about FLiK

At the time, Felton promoted the FLiK coins and the entertainment site by claiming that it would surpass the streaming giant Netflix. He also attracted the investors by stating that FLiK is co-owned by a prominent Atlanta actor and rapper, Clifford Harris Jr, who was fined by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in December 2020. The 48-years-old also told inventors that the platform was already finalizing approvals with major studios and that the U.S. military had agreed to distribute FLiK tokens. DOJ clarified that none of these claims by the movie producer were true.

Felton assured investors that he was actively working on the platform and planned to spend every dollar raised from the ICO sale to formally launch FLiK. But when the ICO was over, he sold off the more than 40 million FLiK tokens he had, which led the token’s value to crash and leave investors with worthless tokens.

Felton entered the plea on the fourth day of his jury trial on Thursday. The DOJ noted that the movie producer moved the token sale proceeds, totaling around $2.4 million, to his personal account rather than using investor funds to establish FLiK as promised. U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan stated:

“The defendant used 21st-century technology to perpetrate an age-old fraud: lying to investors to steal their money and fund his own lavish lifestyle.”

He used the user funds to support his extravagant lifestyle and bought diamond jewelry, Ferrari, and a $1.5 million house.

Notably, as TheCoinRise reported in February, several big celebrities and social media influencers were trapped in a class action lawsuit for their alleged involvement in a traditional pump and dump scheme involving SafeMoon.