If you wish to begin 2024 with a dose of rage, then go forward and watch the Bitconned film on Netflix. Bitconned is the most recent story of a scammer who was rewarded for his crimes with a flashy Netflix documentary, and boy, will it make your blood boil.
Directed by Bryan Storkel (The Pez Outlaw), many of the movie is spent retelling the reporting achieved by journalist Nathaniel Popper, whose 2017 New York Instances story uncovered the bit-coin start-up Centra Tech—which had been endorsed by celebrities like rapper DJ Khaled and wrestler Floyd Mayweather—as a complete rip-off. However Storkel’s film will get the story straight from one of many scammers himself: Ray Trapani. Centra founders Sam “Sobre” Sharma (additionally typically known as Sohrab Sharma) and Trapani, two twenty-somethings from Miami, claimed that they had invented a “bitcoin debit card” which allowed consumers of Centra tokens to entry their bitcoin similar to a Visa. In actual fact, they even claimed they have been working with Visa to make the cardboard.
However it was all a lie. Centra wasn’t working with Visa. It didn’t have a functioning app. The person that the Centra web site claimed was its CEO didn’t even exist. (Trapani says within the documentary he discovered an image for his or her faux CEO, Michael Edwards, by Googling “previous white man.” The picture really belonged to a Canadian physiology professor.)
But the lies labored. Trapani and Sharma raised upwards of $30 million, because of traders fooled by the charade. Finally, the Securities and Alternate Fee lastly stepped in 2018.
What occurred to Sam Sharma from the Netflix Bitconned film?
Sam “Sobre” Sharma also referred to as Sohrab Sharma, is at present in jail, which is why he’s not featured within the movie. He’s serving out his eight-year sentence, which started in 2021. He pled responsible to “conspiring to commit securities fraud, wire fraud, and mail fraud in connection together with his and his co-conspirators’ use of fabric misrepresentations and omissions to solicit traders to buy securities,” in keeping with the U.S. Legal professional’s Workplace, Southern District of New York.
In accordance with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Sharma is serving his time at Montgomery FPC, a minimal safety jail campin Alabama. He’s set to be launched on August 19, 2027.
Sharma’s lawyer offered an announcement for the movie, which is featured simply earlier than the credit, and reads, “Mr. Sharma denies the varied claims made by a number of people on this documentary. Within the close to future, Mr. Sharma appears ahead to telling the true story of Centra Tech and its background.”
The place is Ray Trapani from Netflix Bitconned film now?
Ray Trapani didn’t serve any time in jail for his crimes and is at present residing together with his spouse and youngster as a free man. He was arrested in 2018 shortly after Sharma, and charged with four-count legal complaints with one depend of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, one depend of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one depend of securities fraud, and one depend of wire fraud.
Bitconned director Bryan Storkel filmed Trapani on his sentencing day, April 2, 2022.
“The most important factor is to have the decide consider you’re not going to do extra crimes,” Trapani informs the digicam confidently. “The entire level of placing somebody in jail is to verify they don’t damage the neighborhood, or regardless of the fuck they are saying.”
Trapani notes that he totally cooperated with the FBI. He says he helped safe proof to place away Sharma for eight years and the third Centra co-founder, Robert Farka, in jail for one 12 months.
“The truth that I cooperated means so much, so I hope I get much less time,” Trapani tells the digicam, including, nearly as an afterthought, “I’m sorry for what I did.”
Even when viewers doubted Trapani sincerity, his story labored on the decide. Trapani was sentenced to “time served,” that means no jail time. The decide praised his “extraordinary” cooperation, saying she “didn’t wish to interrupt the trail you’re on, since you appear to be doing so nicely.”
Laughing in his automobile, Tripani is on movie declaring, “No time, bitch!”
When requested what occurred to his cash, Tripani shrugs, smiles coyly, and refuses to reply. “I informed the FBI there’s extra money on the market. It’s as much as them to search out it.”
Trapani was additionally ordered to pay $2.9 million to victims of the Centra fraud. However, because the documentary notes, two months after his sentencing, Tripani purchased a home. Does that imply he has extra crypto cash hidden someplace? His mom says within the movie that he co-signed together with his father-in-law.
When requested within the movie how he afforded the home, Trapani responds,”I did one thing shady, clearly. My complete fucking story is shady shit.”
Trapani has a verified account on X, and different social media platforms, the place his is fortunately selling the documentary.
The doc additionally notes that as of August 2023, not one of the Centra traders had been paid again any cash. Tripani informed the Bitconned filmmakers that he’s planning to start out a brand new mortgage enterprise for “individuals in want” at a 50 % rate of interest, and desires to name it “Cambridge and Brown,” after the distinguished universities. (He claims on his Twitter that this element shouldn’t be true.)
So, apparently, the scamming hustle by no means stops.
