‘Scammers, including celebrity stepson who gave £83,000 to prostitutes, convinced 40,000 victims to invest £16m in a crypto pyramid scheme and spent their money on private jets, property and a shark tank’

A criminal network that convinced around 40,000 victims to hand over their money in a crypto pyramid scheme has amassed a whopping £16 million, a trial in Austria has heard.

Defendants were accused of blowing money on private jets, luxury cars, VIP club nights in Dubai, lavish properties and even in one case a shark tank, Austrian media reported.

One of the suspects, reportedly the 24-year-old stepson of a celebrity, is said to have spent as much as 100,000 euros on prostitutes.

Five people have been given prison sentences in the case, which has been described as Austria’s largest ever fraud trial.

It involved 300 hours of hearings and took place over 60 days at the Klagenfurt Regional Court, with a total of eleven suspects appearing since the first charges were filed in June last year.

The defendants were accused of promising investors high profits if they invested in real estate projects, trading in various cryptocurrencies, including the EXW token.

Some of the defendants in the fraud trial were seen before the Klagenfurt Regional Court last September. None have been mentioned

However, members of the group – including Austrian, Croatian and Italian nationals – were accused of using the money to finance their own lavish lifestyles.

The money is said to have been transported in plastic bags to different members of the group, with one even keeping stacks of cash in shoe boxes at his luxury villa.

Prosecutors say the investigation was complicated by the tactics the defendants used to cover their tracks.

The company’s headquarters were moved to Dubai, which has no extradition agreement with Austria, and members of the group reportedly fled abroad to avoid arrest.

They communicated via Telegram and exchanged money on crypto platforms until the trail became almost impossible to detect.

Prosecutor Caroline Czedik-Eysenberg said the men planned to defraud their victims from the start. She claimed to the court that ‘no profitable projects’ were ever planned and that the plans were ‘just intended to attract customers’.

One of the main defendant’s lawyers claimed that he had no intention of committing fraud, but had instead “invested a lot of work and planned to make a profit from various assets” before becoming overwhelmed by the scale of his project .

The company’s headquarters have reportedly been moved to Dubai, which has no extradition agreement with Austria

None of the suspects in the lawsuit have been named and it is not clear which charges relate to whom.

Five were convicted on fraud charges, while another five were acquitted and the eleventh was said to have been absent from the trial.

The longest sentences handed down were against two of the defendants, who were each given five years in prison without parole.

Of the others, two suspects were sentenced to 30 months each, of which 21 months were suspended for three years.

A fifth defendant was given eighteen months’ probation with a term of three years. It is expected that the previous convictions of three suspects will count towards their sentences.

Meanwhile, five suspects were acquitted during the trial. The reading of the verdict took 30 minutes.