Former IcomTech CEO sentenced to five years in prison for wire fraud

Marco Ochoa, the former CEO of crypto mining firm IcomTech, has been sentenced to five years in prison following a guilty plea for conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

According to a Jan. 19 filing in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Jennifer Rochon ordered Ochoa to forfeit $914,000 and voluntarily surrender to serve his 60-month sentence, beginning on March 19. He will have two years of supervised release.

In September, Ochoa pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud related to a crypto-based Ponzi scheme at IcomTech. He was CEO of the mining firm from 2018 to 2019.

“IcomTech was one of these large-scale copycat cryptocurrency scams and Ochoa, as the purported CEO, played an important role taking IcomTech to scale and ultimately harming more victims,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in September.

According to the Justice Department, IcomTech promised investors daily returns on investment products, but they could not withdraw funds. Authorities charged Ochoa and other IcomTech executives in November 2022, roughly three years after the company collapsed.

David Carmona, the founder of IcomTech, also pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in December 2023. The four other former executives named as defendants in the case have entered guilty and not guilty pleas, but Ochoa was the first to be sentenced.

Many crypto figures have been appearing in courtrooms over the last 12 months in response to a crackdown by U.S. authorities. In November 2023, former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty of seven felony charges and is expected to be sentenced in March. Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to one felony count as part of an agreement between prosecutors and the crypto exchange.

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