Amir Bruno Al-Maani, the 31-year-old founder of the cryptocurrency system Oyster Protocol, has been sentenced to a maximum of four years in prison for tax evasion.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said on October 31 that Al-Maani — also known by the alias “Bruno Block” — was sentenced to prison after pleading guilty on April 6 in which he admitted to secretly minting and selling pearl coins while not paying income tax on a large swath of profits from the venture.
Al-Maani admitted that he caused tax losses exceeding $5.5 million.
“Amir Al-Maani breached his duty to pay taxes on millions of dollars in cryptocurrency profits, and violated the confidence of investors in the cryptocurrency he founded,” District Attorney Damian Williams said regarding the ruling.
Between September and October 2017, Al-Maani promoted a cryptocurrency called Pearl (PRL), marketed as a way for investors to purchase data on a blockchain-based data storage platform called Oyster Protocol.
However, under the watchful eye of the Oyster Protocol team and investors, Al-Maani secretly minted a large batch of new PRL tokens and dumped them on the market for personal gain in October 2018.
“On or about October 29, 2018, I used the smart contract to mint a new PRL, without telling anyone, including others who worked on the Oyster Protocol project. I then sold the newly minted PRL on a digital trading platform,” Al-Maani admitted in the plea agreement. Guilt.
“I was aware that the counterparties who were purchasing the newly minted PRL were most likely not aware of the reopening of the smart contract and were not aware that I had just significantly increased the total supply of PRL,” he added.
Despite earning millions of dollars from the exit scheme, Al-Maani filed a tax return in 2017 claiming he received a total of just $15,000 from the patent design company and reported zero income to tax authorities in 2018.
Related: ‘Low-income’ founder of Oyster Protocol allegedly owns a $10 million yacht filled with gold bullion
The court found that in 2018, Al-Maani spent more than $10 million on multiple yachts, $1.6 million at a carbon fiber composites company, hundreds of thousands of dollars at home improvement stores, and more than $700,000 to purchase two homes.
One of the houses was purchased through a shell company, and the other was in the names of two of Al-Maani’s partners. He also “dealed heavily” in precious metals and kept gold bullion in a safe on one of his yachts.
“In fact, Al-Maani did not report or pay taxes on any of his cryptocurrency proceeds. “At various points, Al-Maani used friends and family as nominees to receive and transfer cryptocurrency proceeds or U.S. currency into his own accounts,” the Justice Department said.
In addition to his four-year prison sentence, Al-Maani was sentenced to one year of supervised release and ordered to pay $5.5 million in restitution.
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