Oyster Protocol Founder Sentenced to 4 Years in Prison for $5.5 Million in Tax Fraud

Amir Bruno Ilmani, 31, the founder of the now-defunct cryptocurrency protocol Oyster Protocol, was sentenced to four years in prison for tax evasion.

The US Attorney's Office announced on October 31 that Elmani – also known as “Bruno Block” – had failed to pay income taxes following his April 6 guilty plea to illegally making and selling Pearl tokens. Profit from the project.

Ilmani admitted to tax losses of more than $5.5 million.

“Amir Ilmani violated his obligation to pay taxes on millions of cryptocurrency profits, and he violated the trust of investors in the cryptocurrency he founded,” District Attorney Damian Williams related to the sentence.

Between September and October 2017, Elmani introduced a cryptocurrency called Pearl (PRL) for investors to purchase data on a blockchain-based data storage platform called Oyster Protocol.

However, under the noses of the Oyster Protocol team and investors, Elmani secretly issued several new PRL tokens and dumped them on the market in October 2018 for his personal gain.

“On or about October 29, 2018, I used the smart contract to create the new PRL without telling anyone, including those who worked on the Oyster Protocol project. I then sold these newly produced PRLs on a digital marketing platform,” Elmani said in his plea agreement.

“The partners buying these newly minted PRLs were not aware that I had reopened the smart contract and that I had significantly increased the total supply of PRL,” he added.

Despite plans to withdraw millions of dollars, Elmani filed tax returns saying he earned only $15,000 in total from the patent design business in 2017 and reported zero income to tax authorities in 2018.

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The court in 2010 In 2018, Elmani spent more than $10 million on several yachts, $1.6 million on a carbon fiber composite company, hundreds of thousands of dollars at home improvement stores and more than $700,000 on two homes.

One house was bought by a Shell company and the other in the name of two associates of Elmani. He also “dealt heavily” in precious metals and kept gold bars in a hold on one of the boats he owned.

“In fact, Elmani has not reported or paid taxes on any of its cryptocurrency earnings. At various times, Elmani used his friends and family as nominees to receive cryptocurrency earnings and transfer them or US currency to his own account,” the DOJ said.

Ilmani was sentenced to one year in prison in addition to four years in prison and was ordered to pay $5.5 million in restitution.

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