Do Kwon, co-founder of TerraUSD and Luna, is facing 15 years in prison for defrauding investors in what a judge called a ‘generational’ scam.
In May 2022, the crypto token named ‘LUNA’ experienced a massive free-fall in the market, plummeting in value from $87 per token to less than a cent. ($0.00005, to be exact.)
More than three years later, the crypto tycoon behind the coin has been sentenced to fifteen years in the clink, with a judge presiding over the case dubbing his crime as fraud on a ‘generational’ scale.
South Korean businessman and software engineer Do Kwon was the co-founder and CEO of TerraformLabs, the company that owned LUNA and its accompanying stablecoin TerraUSD.
Do Kwon was the co-founder and CEO of Terraform Labs, the parent company of cryptocurrency LUNA and stablecoin TerraUSD.
Once touted as one of the strongest cryptocurrencies on the market, LUNA’s fall was nothing short of a financial avalanche… and years later, Kwon is paying the price.
Do Kwon faces 15 years in prison over LUNA fraud
Kwon fled South Korea not long after LUNA’s crash. He was arrested in Montenegro for using a forged passport to travel to Dubai in March 2023. After this arrest, he was extradited to the US, where was placed in front of a grand jury that charged him with eight different counts of fraud.
He pled guilty to two of these counts, apologizing to victims of the fraud and saying, “What I did was wrong.” He was formally sentenced to 15 years in prison in December 2025.
Presiding US district judge Paul A. Engelmayer gave a scathing description of Kwon’s crimes in the courtroom, calling them “fraud on an epic, generational scale.”
“In the history of federal prosecutions, there are few frauds that have caused as much harm as you have, Mr. Kwon,” he said.
YouTube: coinageKwon was arrested in March 2023. In December 2025, he was formally sentenced to 15 years in prison.
LUNA was reportedly valued at a peak total of $50 billion USD before the crash in 2022; afterwards, reports claimed that around $45 billion was lost.
Kwon isn’t the only South Korean crypto fraudster to get arrested recently; in August 2025, an alleged crypto scammer was caught after he was brought in for littering, facing ten criminal charges due to a scheme that reportedly defrauded 1,300 victims out of 17.7 billion won.
