An Australian man named Stefan He Qin was sentenced to more than seven years in prison and a fine of nearly $55 million was levied after pleading guilty to securities fraud by defrauding more than hundreds of investors out of $114 million.

Stefan He Qin, 24, was sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison by U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni in Manhattan on Wednesday. As he read letters from victims, including family members, friends, and business associates, he said he was "absolutely heartbroken."

“Now I feel ashamed to even look them in the eye and tell them I am sorry, but I must,” he told the judge.

Qin promised safety on the investments, according to US Attorney Audrey Strauss, but "investors soon discovered that his strategies weren’t much more than a disguised means for him to embezzle and make unauthorized investments with client funds”

When he was confronted with redemption requests, he doubled down on his scheme, as per US attorney.

"Qin’s brazen and wide-ranging scheme left his beleaguered investors in the lurch for over $54 million, and he has now been handed the appropriately lengthy sentence of over seven years in federal prison,” she adds.

In February, Qin was found guilty of the fraud he committed while owning two Manhattan-based cryptocurrency investment funds, Virgil Sigma and VQR.

In 2017, Qin founded Virgil Sigma Fund Ltd, a hedge fund, in his first year of college. Virgil grew $23.5 million in assets just under a year and a whopping $90 million in 2020, by guaranteeing investors a 500 percent return by using an algorithm developed by Qin called "Tenjin," which claimed to take advantage of arbitrage, trading crypto at different prices in multiple exchanges.

Pavan A

CBW - External Analyst

INDIA