As crypto entrepreneurs such as FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried and former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky face criminal allegations of misconduct and possibly prison time, one of the Justice Department’s earliest collars has a message for today’s players: Get compliant.
Charlie Shrem was an early apostle of cryptocurrency, earning millions of dollars trading bitcoin and treated like a rock star worldwide, with fans at conferences snapping photos of him and pushing business cards at him. But the one-time chief executive and compliance officer of BitInstant went to prison in 2015 for a drug scheme involving the bitcoin exchange he co-founded and an online black market, making Shrem one of the first in the U.S. to get jail time for crimes connected to crypto.
Today, the 33-year-old says he is mining his experience and urging the latest generation of crypto companies to erect guardrails against corporate misconduct.
Source: He Went to Prison for Crypto Crime. Now He’s an Advocate for Compliance. – WSJ
