Update (Jan. 8 at 4:45 pm UTC): This article has been updated to include details from a Jan. 8 status conference.
Prosecutors representing the US government in its criminal case against Do Kwon have laid out their plans for discovery, including requesting search warrants for the Terraform Labs co-founder’s email and Twitter accounts.
In a Jan. 7 filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the chief counsel to the acting US Attorney said prosecutors expected to find “multiple terabytes of data” relevant to their case against Kwon. He added that discovery would include search warrants to “accounts or devices used by Kwon, including his business and personal email accounts, his Twitter account, and four of his electronic devices.”
Do Kwon’s last Twitter reply before being arrested in Montenegro. Source: Do Kwon
Amid the collapse of the Terra ecosystem in 2022, Kwon was consistently posting on X — then Twitter — with his last message published shortly before his 2023 arrest in Montenegro. Prosecutors said they intended to search his social media account, as well as “trading records and other materials from cryptocurrency exchanges” during discovery.
Kwon faces nine felony charges in the US for his alleged fraud related to Terra. Authorities in Montenegro extradited the Terraform co-founder to US officials on Dec. 31 after courts had been weighing competing requests from the US and South Korea for more than a year.
In a Jan. 8 status conference, Inner City Press reported that there were also recordings of Kwon made “without his knowledge, not at the direction of the government” that could be subject to discovery. “Some but not all” of the recordings were part of the evidence in the US Securites and Exchange Commission’s civil case against Kwon and Terraform, which resulted in both parties being found liable for fraud.
Parallels with the prosecution of Sam Bankman-Fried
Initially charging Kwon with eight counts in March 2023, US prosecutors filed a sealed superseding indictment against the Terraform co-founder in 2024, alleging a ninth count: money laundering conspiracy.
The crypto case is similar to that of former FTX CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried, who was extradited from the Bahamas to face a superseding indictment in the US in 2022.
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Bankman-Fried’s lawyers were able to argue a campaign finance charge added to a superseding indictment should be dropped against the former CEO as it was not part of the extradition request. Prosecutors in Kwon’s case seemed to anticipate similar potential problems with the money laundering charge not included in his extradition:
“With respect to the money laundering offense […] the Government expects to seek a waiver by Montenegro of the rule of specialty,” said the Jan. 7 filing, adding:
“Regardless of whether Kwon is tried on Count Nine, the Government anticipates that its proof at trial will remain unchanged, given that the evidence of Kwon’s participation in a conspiracy to launder the proceeds of his crimes also constitutes direct evidence of the other counts.”
Bankman-Fried was found guilty of seven felony counts in 2023 and later sentenced to 25 years in prison. Kwon could potentially face years behind bars if convicted.
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