US federal judge sentences Praetorian’s CEO to 20 years over massive $200 million Bitcoin fraud

Ramil Ventura Palafox just got 20 years in federal prison. He ran a fake crypto company called Praetorian and scammed over 90,000 people across the world. A judge in Alexandria, Virginia, sentenced him after he got hit with wire fraud and money laundering charges.

Ramil is 61 and holds passports from both the United States and the Philippines. He ran Praetorian Group International, also called PGI, where he called himself CEO, chairman, and the face of the whole thing. He told people PGI made money by trading bitcoin.

He said they’d earn daily profits between 0.5% and 3%. That was a lie. PGI wasn’t trading enough bitcoin to even come close to those returns. Instead, Ramil paid early investors with new investors’ money.

Ramil spent investor money on cars, homes, clothes, and fake websites

Between December 2019 and October 2021, more than $201 million flowed into Praetorian. Over $30 million came in as fiat cash, and more than 8,000 bitcoin came in too, worth around $171 million back then.

Out of that, at least $62.6 million is now confirmed as actual losses.

Ramil didn’t spend that money on trading. He spent it on himself. He bought 20 luxury cars for about $3 million. That included Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Bentleys, BMWs, Porsches, McLarens, and more. He booked penthouse suites at fancy hotels and spent $329,000 doing that. He also bought four houses in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, worth over $6 million.

Ramil also spent $3 million shopping at stores like Cartier, Gucci, Rolex, Versace, Neiman Marcus, Louboutin, and Hermès. He bought expensive clothes, watches, jewelry, and furniture. He also sent $800,000 and 100 bitcoin, worth $3.3 million, to one of his family members.

To keep the fraud going, Ramil set up a fake PGI website. From 2020 to 2021, the portal showed fake profits. People would log in and see their investments “growing.” The numbers were all made up. No bitcoin was being traded like that.

Investigators from the FBI Washington Field Office and the IRS Criminal Investigation team in D.C. followed the money trail, tracked the bitcoin, and connected every dollar back to Ramil and Praetorian.

Ramil lied to tens of thousands of people. He promised returns that never existed. He used fake dashboards and flashy events to make it look real. But the cash went to his garage, his closet, and his houses. There was never any plan to make people money.

Now, with Ramil behind bars for 20 years, the name Praetorian is going down in history for all the wrong reasons.