By Jonathan Stempel
Aug 17 (Reuters) – A Georgia man has been deported from Fiji to face charges in his home state accusing him of defrauding more than 6,000 investors and causing more than $165 million of losses in a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme, the U.S. attorney in Atlanta said on Monday.
Edward Zimbardi, 59, of Flowery Branch, Georgia, was indicted on 12 counts of wire fraud, 12 counts of money laundering and one count of money laundering conspiracy.
• Prosecutors said Zimbardi pitched The Crypto Program as a means to purchase online advertising packages, offering a guaranteed 25% monthly rate of return on an initial $550 investment.
• Instead of buying advertising packages, Zimbardi allegedly lost tens of millions of dollars betting on foreign currency, spent at least $10 million on personal expenses including a house for one of his sons and alimony payments, and used new money to repay earlier investors.
• Prosecutors said the alleged scheme ran from June 2022 to August 2023.
• They said Zimbardi fled to Fiji in July 2025 after learning that the FBI was probing him, and skipped the May wedding of one of his sons in Virginia after correctly suspecting that agents might try to arrest him. Investigators traveled to Fiji to escort him back to the U.S., arriving in Los Angeles.
• “He had victims all over the world,” U.S. Attorney Theodore Hertzberg in Atlanta said at a press conference. “If you’re promised 25% returns every month by somebody who expresses remorse for having ‘accidentally’ lost your money in the past, you might be willing to go with it because you’re that desperate to get your money back.”
• Zimbardi was expected to make an initial appearance in Los Angeles federal court. A federal public defender representing him there did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Mark Porter)
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