Three judges rejected arguments that a court violated Randall Crater’s Sixth Amendment rights and included testimony from a crypto expert he claimed was unqualified.
An appellate court has upheld the fraud conviction of Randall Crater, who founded cryptocurrency project My Big Coin and was sentenced to more than eight years in prison.
In a Feb. 23 filing for the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, a three-judge panel affirmed Crater’s conviction more than a year after a jury found the crypto founder guilty of four counts of wire fraud, three counts of unlawful monetary transactions and one count of operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business. Appellate Judges Gustavo Gelpí, Jeffrey Howard and Julie Rikelman issued opinions arguing that Carter was not owed a new trial for participating in the crypto scheme.
Crater’s legal team argued that the court violated his Sixth Amendment rights by not enforcing subpoenas against witnesses he claimed would help his case, and including testimony from a crypto expert he argued was unqualified — Pamela Clegg, vice president of financial investigations at blockchain intelligence firm CipherTrace. According to the judges, no argument by Crater’s counsel “merits reversal.”
