Crypto influencer Charles O. Parks III was sentenced to one year and one day in prison for running a \$3.5M cryptojacking scheme, secretly mining nearly \$1M in ETH, LTC, and XMR using stolen cloud computing power between January and August 2021.

Crypto influencer and self-described entrepreneur Charles O. Parks III, known online as “CP3O,” has been sentenced in U.S. federal court in Brooklyn to one year and one day in prison for operating a large-scale cryptojacking scheme that exploited cloud computing providers. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Parks defrauded two well-known cloud computing companies out of more than $3.5 million worth of computing resources between January and August 2021, which he used to mine nearly $1 million in cryptocurrency, including Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Monero (XMR). He was originally charged with wire fraud, money laundering, and unlawful monetary transactions but ultimately pleaded guilty to wire fraud in December 2024, significantly reducing his potential exposure from a theoretical maximum of decades in prison. Prosecutors said Parks created and used fake corporate entities, including “MultiMillionaire LLC” and “CP3O LLC,” and misrepresented his activities—claiming to build an online education or related business—to obtain and maintain high-level cloud computing access without paying the true cost. He then redirected those resources to covert crypto mining and used some of the proceeds for luxury purchases, including a Mercedes-Benz. As part of the sentence, the court ordered Parks to forfeit $500,000 and the Mercedes-Benz, with restitution to the victim cloud providers to be determined later. The case highlights how traditional fraud and money-laundering statutes are being applied to crypto-related infrastructure abuse, and underscores both the financial exposure cloud providers face from cryptojacking and the growing willingness of U.S. authorities to pursue such schemes as serious federal crimes.

✨ AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

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