--- title: "Execs of Top Meme Coin Charged With Spending Customers’ Money on Luxury Cars" description: "The founder and two top executives of the meme coin SafeMoon have been accused of pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars in customer funds." date: "2023-11-03" modified: "2023-11-03" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/execs-meme-coin-charged-customer-money-luxury-cars" categories: - "Blockchain" - "Future Society" tags: - "crypto" - "crypto bros" - "cryptocurrencies" - "the digest" --- # Execs of Top Meme Coin Charged With Spending Customers’ Money on Luxury Cars ![The founder and two top executives of the meme coin SafeMoon have been accused of pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars in customer funds.]() *HATFIELD, UNITED KINDOM - AUGUST 17: The McLaren 600LT. Seen on display at McLaren in Hatfield, United Kingdom. The 600LT is McLaren's newest offering of sports car. It is considered the most performance focused sports series model to date in McLaren's catalogue, already proving to be faster at some circuits than its higher ranking sibling, the 675LT. (Photo by Martyn Lucy/Getty Images) \Image: Martyn Lucy/Getty Image\* ## Meme to McClaren Surprise, surprise: former top executives of the once-ascendant meme coin SafeMoon, which [according to *Bloomberg*]() ballooned in value by a staggering 19,000 percent at the height of 2021's crypto craze, have been [charged by the US government]() for fraud on grounds that the C-Suite execs siphoned customer funds into their own pockets — and then used that investor cash to purchase things like McClaren and Porsche sports cars, luxury homes, and expensive vacations. Also referred to as simply "SFM," SafeMoon coins started back in 2021 when its creators, [per *Reuters*](), minted "one quadrillion" of the digital tokens, promising potential customers they would take the coin "safely to the Moon" — a claim that echoes the promises of the Terra-Luna "stablecoin," [which turned out to be not so stable after all](). Meanwhile, according to the SEC's allegations, customers were also told that any funds they invested into the coins would be "locked" in secure accounts. But as the SEC alleges, those security promises were lies. As the meme coin's market capitalization "grew to more than $8 billion," reads a [statement]() from the US Justice Department's Eastern District of New York, "the defendants" — SafeMoon founder Kyle Nagy, CEO Thomas Smith, and former CTO Braden Karony — "fraudulently diverted and misappropriated" a stunning $200 million from that so-called "locked" liquidity pool. In other words, according to the SEC, these guys were plainly stealing from customers. ## BRO! Things really aren't looking good for the SafeMoon boys, considering that, according to *Reuters*, prosecutors have the correspondence of Smith — the former CEO — texting "BRO WE DID IT" to an unidentified conspirator as they casually chatted about which luxury vehicles they might buy after Smith had sold tokens that could be traced back to the "locked" customer funds. "Instead of rewarding their clients as promised, their insatiable greed led them to spend millions of dollars on their own lavish desires," said Ivan Arvelo, a US Department of Homeland Security agent involved in the investigation, in a statement. "Today, no luxury vehicles or sprawling real estate can protect them from the consequences of such crimes." Smith and Karony have already been arrested, though Nagy, per *Reuters*, is apparently still on the lam. ([Might we recommend checking Bali]()?) And according to officials, these arrests won't be the last we see in the embattled crypto space. "As fraudsters increasingly use digital assets to mislead investors and misappropriate funds," said Breon Peace, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, in a statement, "our Office will be at the forefront of pursuing them and their ill-gotten gains." **More on crypto bros:** [*After Blowing up Crypto Industry, Exec Turns to Magic Mushrooms*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()