Interpol introduced this night the arrest of Kwon Do-hyeong, often known as Do Kwon, a disgraced crypto fugitive.

Do Kwon is the founding father of TerraUSD stablecoin and Luna, two digital currencies that misplaced an estimated $40 billion final yr.

Interpol apprehended Kwon, 31, and one other individual of curiosity at an airport in Montenegro. In accordance with the Inside Ministry there, the 2 had been utilizing solid paperwork to journey to Dubai.

“He was arrested on the airport with counterfeit documentation and is needed by a number of international locations, together with the USA, South Korea, and Singapore,” Montenegrin Inside Affairs Minister Filip Adžić wrote in a Fb submit.

The arrest is the fruits of a global months-long seek for Do Kwon. South Korea had requested Interpol to subject a “pink discover,” which permits different international locations to arrest Kwon.

In accordance with the New York Times, U.S. prosecutors within the Southern District of New York filed prison expenses towards Mr. Kwon a couple of hours after his arrest. The fees embody wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy to defraud and interact in market manipulation.

Who’s Do Kwon?

Kwon graduated from Stanford and briefly labored at Apple earlier than designing his two cryptocurrencies. TerraUSD was a “stablecoin,” supposed to take care of a continuing worth of $1, whereas Luna’s worth fluctuated.

Between 2021 and early 2022, Luna was valued at $40 billion. Kwon turned extensively fashionable. His followers known as themselves “Lunatics.”

However Luna in the end crashed—its worth cleaned in a single day. The crash precipitated a domino impact on different fashionable cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Quickly after, Kwon went into hiding.

Kwon claimed on Twitter that he was “not on the run.”

However in line with NEWS Reporter, a South Korean court docket issued an arrest warrant for Kwon final September. He was believed to be in Serbia.