The founder of CluCoin, a cryptocurrency token project in Miami, was sentenced to 27 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release and ordered to pay restitution and forfeit assets in the amount of $1.14 million.
The sentence came after the defendant pleaded guilty to wire fraud in August 2024.
Austin Michael Taylor, 41, of Sykesville, Maryland, was the founder of a cryptocurrency project CluCoin and owner of CLU LLC, a company incorporated and headquartered in Miami-Dade County, Fla., that handled CluCoin’s operations.
Taylor leveraged his sizable social media following to generate interest in a digital token he called “CLU.” Taylor generated interest in CLU’s initial coin offering, which is a capital-raising event in which an entity offers investors a unique digital token in exchange for a more established cryptocurrency or fiat currency.
Taylor created a “white paper” for CluCoin, which was meant to educate and entice investors to participate in the ICO and promised a charitable focus. After raising investor funds, Taylor successfully launched CluCoin’s ICO on May 19, 2021.
Taylor then shifted CluCoin’s focus to other projects he devised: minting non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and developing a computer game and a metaverse platform.
Taylor organized and paid for an event called “NFTCon: Into the Metaverse,” which took place in a hotel in Miami on April 4 and 5, 2022, to drive interest and investment in CLU, CluCoin and related projects.
Shortly after the conference, in May 2022, Taylor gained the ability to make withdrawals from the cryptocurrency address he controlled, into which a portion of the CLU investor funds automatically flowed.
From May through December 2022, Taylor sent approximately $1.14 million in investor funds to his account at a virtual currency exchange. He then used the funds at multiple online casinos, where he lost these investor funds to gambling.
