Interpol announced tonight the arrest of Kwon Do-hyeong, also often known as Do Kwon, a disgraced crypto-fugitive.
Crypto fugitive Do Kwon arrested in Montenegro, interior minister says https://t.co/pl9PshdPNb
— Financial Times (@FT) March 23, 2023
Do Kwon is the founding father of the stablecoins TerraUSD and Luna, two digital currencies that lost an estimated $40 billion last 12 months.
Interpol detained 31-year-old Kwon and one other interesting person on the airport in Montenegro. According to the local Home Office, the 2 used forged documents to travel to Dubai.
As Minister of the Interior @filip_adzicannounced today, two nationals, Kwon Do Hyeong and Hon Chang Joon, have been detained and delivered to the Primary National Prosecutor’s Office in Podgorica on charges of committing the crime of document forgery under (1/3) pic.twitter.com/iS0rRs2Fwv
— mupCG (@MupCg) March 23, 2023
“He was arrested on the airport with forged documents and is needed by several countries, including the US, South Korea and Singapore,” Montenegrin Interior Minister Filip Adžić wrote. Facebook post.
The arrest is the culmination of months of international searches for Do Kwon. South Korea asked Interpol to issue a “red notice” that will allow other countries to arrest Kwon.
According to New York times, U.S. prosecutors within the Southern District of New York filed criminal charges against Mr. Kwon hours after his arrest. The allegations include bank fraud, commodity fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy to defraud and have interaction in market manipulation.
Who is Do Kwon?
Kwon graduated from Stanford and briefly worked at Apple before designing his two cryptocurrencies. TerraUSD was a “stablecoin” designed to maintain the value of $1 constant while Luna’s value fluctuated.
Between 2021 and early 2022, Luna was valued at $40 billion. Kwon became very talked-about. His fans called themselves “lunatics”.
But Luna eventually crashed – her value wiped overnight. The outage caused a domino effect on other popular cryptocurrencies reminiscent of Bitcoin. Soon after, Kwon went into hiding.
Kwon stated on Twitter that he was “not running away”.
I’m not “on the run” or anything like that – for any government agency that has shown an interest in communicating, we’re fully cooperative and don’t have anything to cover
“Is Kwon?” (@stablekwon) September 17, 2022
But in accordance with CNNA South Korean court issued an order Arrest warrant for Kwon last September. He was believed to be in Serbia.
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