Long Island resident Eugene William Austin Jr. has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for his role in a $12 million crypto fraud scheme.
Austin, who also went by the name "Hugh Austin," was found guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property in September 2024 following a jury trial.
The 62-year-old, in collaboration with his son Brandon, posed as a broker for sales of large quantities of cryptocurrency in order to defraud entrepreneurs and investors. According to a document from the Department of Justice (DOJ), one of these bogus crypto deals was worth as much as $5 million dollars, with many others in the $500,000 range.
The father-and-son team also pitched short-term crypto investments with promises of high returns and claimed they could secure funding for startups and small businesses through a network of high-net-worth individuals.
More than 24 victims are believed to have been affected by the scheme, many of whom were thought to be friends or acquaintances of the pair. In addition to the 18-year sentence, Austin was ordered to forfeit $6,062,564 and pay restitution totaling $12,662,564. He was also sentenced to three years of supervised release.
Austin’s son Brandon had previously been sentenced to four years in prison for his role in the scheme.
The scammers spent their ill-gotten gains on funding a lavish lifestyle, including luxury hotels, restaurants, shopping, transfers of money to relatives, as well as nominal payments to victims to prolong the scheme. Austin was forced to forfeit a luxury 2022 E-Pace P250 Jaguar SUV at the time of his arrest.
Long Island swindlers
Despite the widespread nature of Austin’s crimes, the case is nowhere near the largest crypto scam operation to emerge from Long Island in recent years.
In 2022, Eddy Alexandre was sentenced to nine years in prison for his role in a $248 million crypto ponzi scheme.
Alexandre duped over 25,000 investors, many of whom came from Long Island’s Haitian community, into investing in a purported cryptocurrency and foreign exchange trading platform called EminiFX, offering fake returns of 5%.
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