Eventually, Garza and his company captured the attention of the Justice Department which examined the company in parallel with the SEC. And the mountain of lies began to crumble. In 2017, a Connecticut judge “levied a $9.9 million civil judgment against Garza.” Both GAW Miners and ZenMiner had been previously ordered to pay $11.4 million — the SEC’s bid for a default judgment against the companies.
In July 2017, Graza pleaded guilty “on a wire fraud charge related to the creation and sale of a cryptocurrency called PayCoin.” The coin is still on the market and is currently trading at $0,016.
The prosecutors stated that Garza ran a nine-month scheme that resulted in investors losing close to $9.2 million — an amount which he will have to pay as restitution. He will serve two years in prison beginning January 4th 2019. Then he will be released and supervised for another three. That will include six months spent in home confinement.
The story of Garza is not unique in the crypto world. Every now and then cases of outrageous scams are disclosed, exposing the truth behind people and companies like Michael Stollaire, the so-called blockchain evangelist, Bitconnect and even potentially Hashflare and Tezos.
