The first Serbian member of Kristijan Krstic’s Ponzi empire has been extradited to the US.
Antonije Stojilkovic was arrested in July 2020 in Belgrade, on behalf of US authorities.
Stojilkovic consented to extradition, and was escorted by FBI agents to Texas on February 4th.
Stojilkovic is now facing charges related to participation in Krstic’s $70 million+ Ponzi empire.
Stojilkovic’s was indicted in July 2020 by a Grand Jury, on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The DOJ has linked Krstijan Krstic’s Ponzi empire to “more than 20 fraudulent investing platforms”.
These include Options Rider, Bancde Options, Start Options, Dragon Mining Tech (made up of Crypto Mining Space, Palilula Mining, BTC Trader Online, BTC Mining Factory and Coin Pool Mining), Trinity Mining, Bitcoiin and Hedger Tech.
According to the DOJ’s February 5th press-release, over a dozen members of Krstic’s Ponzi empire have been indicted.
Mr. Stojilkovic and more than a dozen other alleged fraudsters were indicted by a Dallas-based federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in July 2020.
His coconspirators include Kristijan Krstic, Xenia Faye Atilano Krstic, Marko Pavlovic, Uros Selakovic, and Nenad Krstic, all arrested during the Serbian police operation in July.
One U.S. based coconspirator, Haojia Miao, was arrested in California in October 2020.
From their home bases in China, Serbia, and elsewhere, the defendants allegedly targeted investors around the globe – including several in north Texas – soliciting “investments” in binary options and cryptocurrency mining.
A common methodology used by Krstic (right) and his accomplices, was the use of of fake identities to promote their scams.
The defendants concocted profiles – complete with names and photographs, mostly female – for these non-existent investing companies’ officers and chair people, and even used fake names during video conference calls in order to convince potential investors the company was legitimate.
An early example of this is “Bob Roberts”, the fictional operator of Options Rider. Krstic killed off Roberts after Options Rider collapsed in late 2015.
Possibly pending extradition or Krstic himself, the indictments are currently under seal.
What we do know is if convicted, Krstic and his accomplices are facing up to twenty years in prison each.
As of October 2020, Krstic was fighting extradition to the US. The SEC confirmed a few days ago that Krstic is yet to be extradited.
Stay tuned as we continue to track the case.