Bonus: Madison Cawthorn, Crypto-Scam Artist
My crypto-world source hipped me to the Nikolai Mushegian murder and I asked him if he pays dues to be part of QAnon. But as the SB-F tragedy began playing out, I thought more about it and eventually even mentioned it in a couple of posts about the crypto-collapse and how it relates to the rot at the core of the two political parties. A couple of weeks ago I noted that there has been a dearth of reporting, so far but not much longer, on the FTX crew’s connection to drugs and sex scandals, as well as to one prominent crypto-murder. I was reticent to do it but I wrote about Mushegian’s death and ran this:
In the crypto-universe, 29-year old Nikolai Mushegian was considered a visionary, an innovator (especially in regard to Ethereum) and a Blockchain security genius. He was a co-founder of MakerDAO. In late October, he was found dead after threatening to expose FTX’s insolvency and their brewing sex and drugs scandal. He lived in Puerto Rico and was found drown by a beach patrol.
The tweet on the left is from last night. It's definitely breaking news if you're following this wild, crazy story. The tweet on the right is from last weekend. I sure hope the DoJ is into this case now and they're not going to leave it to a gaggle of complicit politicians or corrupted Bahamians (newly enriched with digital assets).
I haven’t looked at Breitbart in years but this week they did notice that Mushegian isn’t the only crypto-billionaire who suddenly turned up dead. By their count, there were 3. That’s a rapid rate of billionaire elimination. By the way, just so everyone is clear about this, when we talking about eliminating billionaires, as we often do, we mean through taxation, not by killing them.
Lucas Nolan: “Over the course of the past month, multiple cryptocurrency billionaires have died under mysterious circumstances. All three had made their fortunes in the cryptocurrency industry, with one tweeting that he believed he was being targeted just days before his demise.” That’s Mushegian and that’s where the Breitbart story began:
On October 28, cryptocurrency pioneer Nikolai Mushegian tweeted that he believed intelligence agencies were going to murder him. Mushegina was the cofounder of MakerDAO, a blockchain-based decentralized finance platform. In a tweet posted at 4:57 a.m., he stated: “CIA and Mossad and pedo elite are running some kind of sex trafficking entrapment blackmail ring out of Puerto Rico and Caribbean islands,”
He added: “They are going to frame me with a laptop planted by my ex [girlfriend] who was a spy. They will torture me to death.”
The New York Post reports that Mushegian then left his $6 million beach house in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for a walk. Shortly after 9:00 a.m., Mushegian’s body in the waves where he had apparently drowned.
On November 23, it was revealed that Tiantian Kullander, the co-founder of the Hong Kong-based digital asset company Amber Group, was reported to have died in his sleep. Kullander was just 30 years old.
His company’s website published the news “with the deepest sadness and a heavy heart.” Kulander launched Amber in 2017 with a group of finance insiders including former Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley workers.
Amber Group had received a $3 billion valuation in 2022 and was seeking another $100 million in funds shortly before Kullander’s death.
“He put his heart and soul into the company, in every stage of its growth. He led by example with his intellect, generosity, humility, diligence and creativity,” the company statement reads. “TT was a respected thought leader and widely recognized as a pioneer for the industry. His depth of knowledge, his willingness to collaborate and his desire to always help others benefited countless start-ups and individuals.”
On November 29 it was reported that billionaire Vyacheslav Taran, 53, the Russian founder of the Forex Club and president of the Libertex Group, had died in a helicopter crash near the French-Italian border in Villefranche-sur-Mer.
Taran’s business describes itself as a leading foreign exchange and crypto trading platform, and said in a statement: “It is with great sadness that Libertex Group confirms the death of its co-founder and Chairman of Board of Directors, Vyacheslav Taran, after a helicopter crash.”
Taran was traveling in an Airbus H130 helicopter from Lucerne, Switzerland, to Monaco when it crashed. Taran and the helicopter’s French pilot were both killed, according to the France Bleu radio network.
Although none of the deaths of crypto billionaires appear to be linked, all of them are mysterious enough to raise a few eyebrows.
One crypto-goat who neither became a billionaire nor a murder victim is our old pal young Madison. For us, Cawthorn’s crypto-connection was always something fun to cover, like this or this. In May CNBC ran a story about Cawthorn’s partial admission of guilt in a pump and dump crypto-scheme.
"According to the Ethics Committee's press release, Cawthorn is being investigated for improperly promoting a cryptocurrency-- a pump and dump scam-- in which he had an undisclosed financial interest... Cawthorn has been profiting from the now worthless 'Let's Go Brandon' meme cryptocurrency. The Ethics Committee empaneled a Madison Cawthorn subcommittee 2 weeks ago to investigate the charges against him.” It’s academic now, since a series— really cascade— of other scandals caused him to lose his reelection bid.
But, still… Cawthorn "belatedly disclosed suspected cryptocurrency transactions that earlier this month led the House Ethics Committee to open an investigation into the North Carolina Republican's possible promotion of an asset he secretly owned." After that the Ethics Committee-- with McCarthy's acquiescence-- was on his ass, he admitted that "he bought between $100,001 and $250,000 worth of 'Let’s Go Brandon' cryptocurrency on Dec. 21. The transaction came eight days before he wrote a Dec. 29 Instagram post that said, 'Tomorrow we go to the moon,' in response to a photo of him posing with co-founders of the coin. A day later, the dollar value of that crypto-- which is named after a derogatory phrase about Biden-- soared 75% on news of its sponsorship deal with a NASCAR driver." That indicates that Cawthorn probably had insider information, part of the "pump" part of the scheme. In the May filing, he also admitted that he "sold between $100,001 and $250,000 of 'Let’s Go Brandon' coin on Dec. 31," two days after he told his followers on Instagram that malarky about "going to the moon."
So why didn’t he become a crypto-billionaire? He did manage to buy a new house in Lee County, Florida for $1.1 million recently, but the source of his wealth is more likely to be from the multimillion dollar settlements he’s gotten from the accident that paralyzed him from the waste down that from his crypto-scam. His ridiculous “Let’s Go Brandon” coin is worthless and everyone who bought it lost whatever they paid, although not before young Madison cashed out.
A brief note about another scam artist, a Cawthorn mirror image. One of Cawthorn’s claims to fame was always how he was the youngest member of Congress— elected at age 25 (the legal minimum). As if no one ever told him about Cawthorn, Maxwell Frost (AKA, Maxwell Alejandro Frost) claims to be the first-ever Gen Z member of Congress. He was also 25 when he won his election, a victory partially fueled by a corrupt deal with… Sam Bankman-Fried, who pumped a million dollars in stolen funds into Frost’s campaign after Frost agreed to become a slave to the crypto-agenda if he were elected. Frost even started a "crypto-advisory board" while he was running, a board that included Bankman-Fried sycophants like Ritchie Torres (D-NY), Bankman-Fried’s man on the House Financial Services Committee.