Cryptocurrency blogger caused more than $ 3.5 million in losses to miners

Crypto blogger Charles O. Parks III, known online as «CP3O,» has been sentenced to one year and one day in prison for a large-scale cryptojacking scheme that caused cloud computing providers more than $ 3.5 million in losses. According to the US Department of Justice, between January and August 2021, he mined nearly $ 1 million in Ethereum ETH $4,271.60 Bridged Ether (StarkGate) -6.44% Market capitalization $0.11 billion VOL. 24 hours $3.13 billion , Litecoin LTC $116.49 Litecoin -4.40% Market capitalization $8.88 billion VOL. 24 hours $73.5 million , and Monero XMR $275.62 Monero 0.00% Market capitalization $5.08 billion VOL. 24 hours $0.00000000 using stolen computing resources.

Prosecutors said that Parks created fictitious companies such as MultiMillionaire LLC and CP3O LLC to obtain extended access rights from cloud services. He convinced one of the providers that he was developing an educational platform for 10,000 students, although in fact all the resources were used for crypto mining. When the company began to ask questions about suspicious expenses and unpaid bills, he diverted attention and continued to exploit.

In December 2024, Parks pleaded guilty to wire fraud. Initially, he faced up to 50 years in prison on charges of money laundering and illegal financial transactions, but after a plea deal with the investigation, the sentence was significantly lighter. The court also ordered him to confiscate $ 500,000 and a Mercedes-Benz car, and the amount of compensation to the victims will be determined separately.

Parks laundered the illegally obtained funds through crypto exchanges, NFT marketplaces, payment services and banks, cashing them in and spending them on a luxurious lifestyle: jewelry, first-class travel, and cars. At the same time, he was trying to gain popularity in the crypto community by promoting the idea of the «MultiMillionaire Mentality» and offering subscriptions to his own coaching service for $ 10 per month or individual consultations for $ 150, paid for with his own token.

The verdict coincided with news of large-scale losses of crypto investors from fraudulent attacks. For example, recently, one user lost $ 3.05 million in Tether (USDT) due to a phishing transaction. According to CertiK, in the first half of 2025 alone, the crypto industry lost more than $ 2.2 billion due to hacker attacks, fraud, and wallet hacking, of which $ 1.7 billion was due to wallet compromise and more than $ 410 million to phishing schemes.