A former Seventh-day Adventist Church deacon who was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2023 for scamming more than 25,000 people, mostly investors, out of nearly $250 million in a cryptocurrency scheme has been ordered to pay back almost all of it.
US District Judge Valerie Caproni found Eddy Alexandre liable for restitution and ordered him to repay more than $228 million, The Christian Post reports.
Alexandre, 53, was a deacon at Maranatha French-Speaking Seventh-day Adventist Church in Jamaica, Queens. He founded the now-defunct crypto platform EminiFX and recruited victims, many of them Haitian immigrants, through the Haitian Adventist Church network. According to court documents obtained by Premiere Network, Alexandre was charged with one count of commodities fraud and one count of wire fraud.
From September 2021 through May 2022, court documents state: “In the course of soliciting investments in a cryptocurrency and FOREX investment platform, [Alexandre] made false and misleading statements to current and prospective investors about, among other things, the manner in which he invested their funds and the performance of their investments.”
According to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, Alexandre promised investors at least a 5% weekly return using fake artificial intelligence trading technology.
“Instead of using investors’ funds as he had promised, Alexandre also misdirected at least approximately $14,700,000 to his personal bank account,” the office said. “For example, Alexandre used $155,000 in investor funds to purchase a BMW for himself and spent an additional $13,000 of investor funds on car payments, including to Mercedes-Benz.”
He also reportedly used the money on a $4.8 million Long Island home, acquired nearly 50 foreclosed properties, leased six cars and transferred $15 million into his personal bank account.
In addition to his nine-year sentence, Alexandre was sentenced to three years of supervised release, ordered to forfeit $248,829,276.73 and to pay restitution of $213,639,133.53.