Crypto Star Turned Scammer: 12-Month Jail Term For $3.5M Scheme

A self-styled crypto influencer was sentenced to prison after prosecutors said he ran a large cryptojacking scheme that siphoned cloud computing power and secretly mined digital coins.

According to the Department of Justice, Charles O. Parks III, who called himself “CP3O” online, used fake business names to win elevated access to cloud accounts and mined digital assets with the stolen resources.

He was given a sentence of one year and one day and ordered to forfeit $500,000 and a Mercedes-Benz, with restitution to be set later.

How The Scheme Worked

Prosecutors say Parks posed as companies like “MultiMillionaire LLC” and “CP3O LLC” to convince cloud providers to hand over larger compute allotments.

Between January and August 2021, the stolen capacity was used to mine nearly $1million worth of Ether, Litecoin, and Monero.

The DOJ also said Parks laundered proceeds through exchanges, an NFT marketplace, payment processors and banks, and that some of the money paid for a Mercedes-Benz, jewelry and first-class travel.

Today the US Attorney’s Office, Eastern Dist. of NY unsealed an indictment charging Charles O. Parks III a.k.a. “CP3O”, with operating a large-scale illegal cryptojacking op

He defrauded cloud comp. services out of $3.5mil+ worth of computing resources to mine crypto worth $1mil pic.twitter.com/geXt5BKax6

— jerbz (@JerbztheGreat) April 16, 2024

The defendant pleaded guilty to wire fraud in December, avoiding longer charges that could have carried far stiffer sentences.

An April 2024 indictment named accounts tied to a subsidiary of a Seattle-based cloud and electronics firm and a Redmond-based computing company as among those defrauded.

Authorities described the total value of computing resources taken in the scheme as more than $3.5 million.

Bigger Picture On Crypto Crime

The Parks case arrived alongside reports of large user losses from scams. Blockchain watchers flagged a $3 million USDT phishing loss recently, and security firm data show roughly $2.50 billion lost to hacks, scams and breaches in the first half of 2025.

Wallet breaches accounted for nearly $2 billion across 34 incidents, while phishing attacks totaled over $400 million across 132 events, according to those industry figures.

The Q2 + H1 2025 Hack3d Report is here.

$2.47B lost in the first half of the year. $801M lost in Q2 alone. Phishing and wallet compromise dominated the threat landscape.

Dive into the data pic.twitter.com/Sxa6AGejGK

— CertiK (@CertiK) June 30, 2025

Cloud services rent huge amounts of CPU and GPU time, and attackers who gain elevated access can run mining rigs at scale while bills pile up in the providers’ ledgers.

In this case, the miners converted compute into cryptocurrency that prosecutors say funded a luxury lifestyle. The DOJ framed the case as a clear example of how tech access and lax vetting can be abused for profit.

The sentencing included forfeiture of $500,000 and the car; final restitution numbers will be decided later.

Officials, including New York City Police Department commissioner Jessica S. Tisch, stressed that the case shows the real-world impact of tech fraud and illegal mining.

Featured image from The Boar, chart from TradingView