The well-known lobbyist and ex-convict Jack Abramoff had agreed to plead guilty to a cryptocurrency scam. He was operating an alleged Bitcoin fraud case that was violating existing federal lobbying disclosure regulations.
On Thursday, the U.S. SEC announced its charges against both the chief executive of NAC Foundation, Rowland Marcus Andrade, and Abramoff.
The accusations consist of operating a conspiracy scheme making false and misleading statements to possible clients and purchasers of the offered cryptocurrency AML Bitcoin. A Financial Times report states that the scheme raised $5.6m from small investors through the fraudulent sale of the tokens, promised to be converted into the AML Bitcoin.
Reuters reported that The U.S. government said on Thursday that lobbyist Jack Abramoff has agreed to plead guilty on the case. He has previously spent four years in prison for a government corruption-related investigation and now has agreed to cooperate and comply with the SEC.
As per the report, lawyers for Abramoff and NAC Foundation did not immediately respond to the requested comments, and Andrade’s defense counsel could not be immediately identified.
In 2006 Abramoff pleaded guilty in a case connected with conspiracy, government officials bribing, fraud, and tax evasion. Back then, he was also accused of misleading a number of clients originating from Native American tribes by lobbying for reservation casinos.
As a result, Abramoff spent four years in prison and was released in 2010, subject to three years on probation.
After serving his time in prison and probation, a few years later, in 2016, Abramoff officially returned to lobbying. A news report from 2017 states that according to documents he filed with the Justice Department, Abramoff worked on a potential set up of a meeting between President of the Republic of Congo Denis, Sassou Nguesso, and then-President-elect Donald Trump.
Back then, he told the Justice Department that he accepted no payment for arranging a meeting on behalf of Nguesso. In the documents, he also added he did not succeed in the arrangement of the meeting between the president Nguesso and then-President-elect Trump.
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