Crypto scam and the greed that nurtures it

Parbina Rashid

A confession: crypto confuses me. So, a scam in the world of crypto currency would have left me baffled had it not been for Ray Trapani, who pulled off a mega scam with such elementary lies that it all looked like child’s play. In fact, as he goes on narrating his journey from a teenage drug peddler to founder of a crypto currency company, it’s like watching a poorly written con character on screen, something like a poor cousin of our own Bunty from the hit ‘Bunty and Babli’ franchise.

The 1 hour, 34-minute crime docu-series ‘Bitconned’ is about Trapani, the co-founder of Centra Tech, and how by fraudulent means he and his two partners, Sohrab Sharma, aka ‘Sam’ Sharma, and Robert Farkas, generate $25 million.

Trapani was exposed by New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper and was arrested in 2018. He was charged on 10 separate counts, including “conspiracy to commit securities fraud as to Centra Tech”, “conspiracy to commit wire fraud as to Centra Tech” and “wire fraud as to credit card and other charges”.

Charges that were enough to put him behind bars for the next 100 years, as the docu-series points out. But last seen, he had bought a house for himself and started a new venture of money-lending. It’s the absurdity of his persona which makes this docu-series absolutely bingeworthy. It might, however, disappoint viewers who are interested in the crypto world, as the docu-series does not delve deeper into it, except for a few insightful analyses from Popper in the context of unregulated markets or the systemic issues of fraud within the crypto sector. The focus here is mainly on Ray.

“Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to be a criminal,” Ray says in his introduction. And he starts early. He sells prescription pills as a teenager. When caught, to avoid jail time, he snitches on friends and moves on with his life without remorse. When Ray loses all his money, he starts Centra Tech with Sharma and Farkas.

The plan is to create a debit card for crypto that allows people who have made millions off Bitcoin to actually use their profits. So begins the chain of lies to lure investors — fake website, fake CEO, fake profiles of the company stakeholders, fake apps, fake Bitcoin card and paid celebrity endorsement by boxer Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled. His entire empire is so fake that an SEC (US Securities and Exchange Commission) investigator wonders, “It’s hard to understand how anyone would think that would work.”

But things do work out for him. Not for his business partners though, who are in jail for the next few years. It’s his earnest cooperation with the investigative agencies like the FBI and SEC that does the trick. His ‘extraordinary cooperation’ finds a mention in the verdict one time too many. The only time he is made to serve is the four years he spent in rehab as the authorities find him perpetually in a ‘highly medicated’ state.

It’s the same extraordinary co-operation he extends to director Bryan Storkel too. Though Bryan makes Ray’s family, former friends, Popper and investigative officers talk in order to construct the story of Centra Tech’s rise and fall, it’s Ray’s earnestness in sharing his own sordid saga that overshadows others. And as we oscillate between Roy’s cockiness and crypto’s volatility, the main takeaway from the series is — it was not Ray’s shrewdness but people’s greed to make quick mega bucks that made him a millionaire.