‘Wished by A number of International locations.’ Crypto Fugitive Is Nabbed in Montenegro.

Interpol introduced this night the arrest of Kwon Do-hyeong, also called Do Kwon, a disgraced crypto fugitive.

Crypto fugitive Do Kwon arrested in Montenegro, says inside minister https://t.co/pl9PshdPNb

— Monetary Occasions (@FT) March 23, 2023

Do Kwon is the founding father of TerraUSD stablecoin and Luna, two digital currencies that misplaced an estimated $40 billion final yr.

Interpol apprehended Kwon, 31, and one other individual of curiosity at an airport in Montenegro. In keeping with the Inside Ministry there, the 2 had been utilizing cast paperwork to journey to Dubai.

Because the Minister of Inside @filip_adzic, introduced earlier immediately, two residents, Kwon Do Hyeong and Hon Chang Joon, had been apprehended and delivered to the Primary State Prosecutor’s Workplace in Podgorica, on felony fees for the felony offense of doc forgery underneath (1/3) pic.twitter.com/iS0rRs2Fwv

— mupCG (@MupCg) March 23, 2023

“He was arrested on the airport with counterfeit documentation and is needed by a number of international locations, together with the USA, South Korea, and Singapore,” Montenegrin Inner Affairs Minister Filip Adžić wrote in a Fb submit.

The arrest is the end result of a global months-long seek for Do Kwon. South Korea had requested Interpol to situation a “pink discover,” which permits different international locations to arrest Kwon.

In keeping with the New York Times, U.S. prosecutors within the Southern District of New York filed felony fees in opposition to Mr. Kwon a number of hours after his arrest. The fees embody wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy to defraud and have interaction in market manipulation.

Who’s Do Kwon?

Kwon graduated from Stanford and briefly labored at Apple earlier than designing his two cryptocurrencies. TerraUSD was a “stablecoin,” supposed to keep up a continuing value of $1, whereas Luna’s worth fluctuated.

Between 2021 and early 2022, Luna was valued at $40 billion. Kwon turned broadly common. His followers known as themselves “Lunatics.”

However Luna finally crashed—its worth cleaned in a single day. The crash brought about a domino impact on different common cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Quickly after, Kwon went into hiding.

Kwon claimed on Twitter that he was “not on the run.”

I’m not “on the run” or something related – for any authorities company that has proven curiosity to speak, we’re in full cooperation and we do not have something to cover

— Do Kwon ? (@stablekwon) September 17, 2022

However in accordance with CNN, a South Korean court docket issued an arrest warrant for Kwon final September. He was believed to be in Serbia.