BUSTED

Crypto Fugitive Do Kwon Charged With Fraud After Arrest in Montenegro

The former crypto king was detained ahead of a flight to Dubai while traveling with fake documents.

Do Kwon, the entrepreneur behind two cryptocurrencies that cratered spectacularly last year, was arrested in Montenegro on Thursday, according to local authorities. The 31-year-old was apprehended with falsified documents at a passport check ahead of a flight to Dubai, Montenegro’s Interior Ministry said in a statement. He has since been charged by U.S. prosecutors with eight criminal counts including fraud. Kwon had been in hiding since September, when South Korean authorities issued a warrant and Interpol issued a red notice for his arrest. (Kwon has denied being on the run and called the charges “politically motivated” but has refused to give up his location.) The total collapse of his so-called TerraUSD “stablecoin” and its sister currency Luna last May set off a chain reaction that wiped out more than $40 billion from the crypto economy. The SEC charged him last month with orchestrating a “multi-billion dollar crypto asset securities fraud.”