‘Bitcoin Rodney’ pleads guilty in $1.8B HyperFund fraud

Rodney Burton, 56, nicknamed ‘Bitcoin Rodney,’ pleaded guilty on June 17 to a federal charge of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business after promoting HyperFund, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland announced.

Prosecutors allege HyperFund collected about $1.8 billion from investors in multiple countries between June 2020 and January 2022 and that the platform operated as a wire-fraud scheme.

Court filings state Burton promoted the platform and helped move investor funds through companies he controlled. Authorities allege those firms posed as consulting businesses while operating without required money-transmission licenses.

HyperFund’s promotional materials promised daily rewards of 0.5% to 1% and suggested investors could double or triple their capital. The company claimed revenue from large-scale cryptocurrency mining, but federal investigators allege it lacked the mining infrastructure it described.

As withdrawals became unsustainable, the platform began restricting and then blocking users from accessing funds in 2021, leaving many investors unable to retrieve money they had placed with the service.

Federal prosecutors say Burton received at least $7.85 million in proceeds from the operation, including funds traced to investors in Maryland.

Burton faces a maximum federal prison term of five years and is scheduled to be sentenced on July 23.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office wrote that HyperFund presented itself as legitimate and that it was “a global wire-fraud scheme that obtained $1.8 billion from victim-investors worldwide.”