Do Kwon, the former CEO of Terraform Labs, whose stablecoin TerraUSD crashed last year, has reportedly been charged with fraud by the U.S. after being arrested Thursday morning in Montenegro.
The Wall Street Journal and Blomberg News reported late Thursday that Kwon was charged by federal prosecutors in Manhattan with eight counts, including securities fraud, commodities fraud and wire fraud and conspiracy.
Kwon had been an international fugitive after dropping out of sight last fall after his native South Korea issued a warrant for his arrest.
Kwon’s arrest was announced Thursday morning by Filip Adzec, Montenegro’s Minister of Interior, in a tweet: “The former ‘cryptocurrency king,’ who is behind losses of more than $ 40 billion, was detained at the Podgorica airport with falsified documents, and the same is claimed by South Korea, the USA and Singapore.”
Adzec added in another tweet that “one of the world’s most wanted fugitives was arrested in Podgorica,” saying that Montenegrin police have “detained a person suspected of being one of the most wanted fugitives, South Korean citizen Do Kwon.”
In February, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused the Singapore-based Terraform Labs and CEO of fraud. The statement from the SEC alleged that Terraform and Kwon misled and deceived investors while marketing the Luna token, a cryptocurrency that crashed in May 2022 and set off a catastrophic ripple effect across the crypto industry.