According to claims made by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on January 5, Rodney Burton was detained and charged by American authorities for allegedly scamming more than $7 million through a fictitious investment scheme.Court documents reveal that Burton, popularly known as “Bitcoin Rodney,” was accused of pushing the HyperVerse cryptocurrency investment fraud in Maryland.In June 2020, Hyperfund, HyperCapital, and HyperNation—other names for HyperVerse—were founded as an unincorporated business, according to the application.
“A network of HyperFund promotors, in the District of Maryland and elsewhere, made fraudulent promotional presentations to investors and potential investors,” according to the filing by Andrew J. Accardi, a special agent with the IRS’s Criminal Investigations department. “HyperFund falsely claimed that investors who purchased ‘memberships’ would receive between 0.5% to 1% daily in passive rewards until HyperFund doubled or tripled the investor’s initial investment.”
According to the document, Burton is accused of receiving 562 cashier’s checks or wire transfers from private persons totaling $7,851,711.He was taken into custody in Florida on Friday and will be moved to Maryland.
A Guardian Australia investigation published last month claims that thousands of people lost millions of dollars as a result of the HyperVerse cryptocurrency scheme.According to the publication, CEO Steven Reece Lewis of HyperTech, who doesn’t seem to exist, pushed and oversaw the scam.Stephen Jones, Australia’s Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, has said that he will question the Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) about why, in contrast to other countries, it failed to alert the public about the HyperVerse cryptocurrency scheme.
The U.S. Treasury, IRS and Barton’s public defense team didn’t immediately respond to a CoinDesk request for comment.