David Brend, convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for promoting cryptocurrency mining and trading firm IcomTech, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
In a Dec. 2 hearing in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Judge Jennifer Rochon ordered Brend to serve 120 months at the Federal Prison Camp in Pensacola, Florida. He is expected to pay $40,000 in forfeiture and surrender to prison authorities on Dec. 16.
Brend’s sentencing came roughly a month after Judge Rochon ordered his fellow IcomTech promoter, Gustavo Rodriguez, to serve eight years in prison. The judge suggested the harsh sentence was intended to deter “crypto frauds.”
“David Brend and Gustavo Rodriguez were central to the IcomTech Ponzi scheme — Rodriguez as the chief architect of its sham website, Brend as a face-to-face salesman who peddled the bogus enterprise and its supposed lucrative returns for investors,” said US Attorney Damian Williams in a Dec. 3 statement, adding:
“Together with others, Brend and Rodriguez defrauded thousands of people out of millions of dollars.”
Scheme built around ‘lavish expos’ and ‘luxury clothing’ to entice victims
According to the US Attorney’s office, Brend was one of the IcomTech promoters who traveled across the country to encourage people to use the platform’s investment products for “financial freedom.” The indictment alleged IcomTech amounted to a crypto-based Ponzi scheme, taking more than $8 million from users between 2018 and 2019.
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“IcomTech’s promoters, including Brend, siphoned off, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars in Victim funds, which they withdrew as cash, spent on IcomTech promotional expenses, and used for personal expenditures such as luxury goods and real estate,” said the US Attorney’s office.
Authorities arrested IcomTech founder — and its alleged “mastermind” — David Carmona in 2022, with a judge sentencing him to 10 years in prison in October. Marco Ochoa, the company’s CEO, was sentenced to five years in January.
Rodriguez and Brend pleaded not guilty and went to trial. In March, a jury found them guilty of one count of wire fraud conspiracy each.
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