في صيف عام 2017، عندما كان سوق الكريبتو يمر بأول انفجار جماهيري لموجة الـ (ICO)، ظهرت شركة ناشئة في ميامي تُدعى Centra Tech. وعدت العالم بحل سحري: "بطاقة ائتمان تتيح لك إنفاق البيتكوين في أي متجر قبولاً لـ Visa و MasterCard".
جمع الشركاء أكثر من 32 مليون دولار في أسابيع قليلة. ولكن خدف هذه الإمبراطورية المالية لم تكن سوى كذبة طفولية قادها ثلاثة شباب بلا أي خبرة مالية: سهراب "سام" شارما (Sohrab Sharma)، وروبرت فاركاس (Robert Farkas)، ورفيقهما رايموند تراباني (Raymond Trapani).
Chapter One: The Young Boys and Dreams of Fast Wealth
Before any of them had even heard the word "blockchain," Sorab Sharma and Robert Farkas were living ordinary lives marked by random ambition in Florida. Neither studied finance at Harvard, nor did either of them work at Goldman Sachs.
Their most prominent job was running a small company renting out luxury cars called Miami Exotics. There, amid rented Ferraris and Lamborghinis, the young men learned one thing: people don’t care about the truth—they’re drawn to appearances and sparkle.
When the crypto revolution ignited in 2017, the partners realized that selling "digital illusions" was far easier than renting out cars. They had no product or ready software code—just one simple idea: why not invent everything from nothing?
Chapter Two: The CEO Who Didn’t Exist
The three created a professional website for Centra Tech. And to convince major investors, they had to have an executive management team with extensive experience.
Here the partners made their first historical acts of naivety:
Innovation of "Michael Edwards": They announced that the company’s CEO was a man named "Michael Edwards," with 20 years of experience in the banking sector and a master’s degree from Harvard University.
The fake photo: Instead of hiring an actor or a model, they pulled a random teacher’s photo from the internet and used it as the CEO’s image!
Secret conversations: The WhatsApp messages and text messages later seized by the authorities revealed an odd level of naivety. In one message, Sharma wrote to his partners: "We need to find someone who looks like Michael to take photos with the team.. Everyone here is real except Michael and Jessica (the Vice President)!".
The partners didn’t stop at falsifying the organizational structure; they also claimed to have obtained financial licenses in 38 U.S. states, and a formal partnership with the payments giants Visa and MasterCard to issue Centra Card cards.
Chapter Three: Hollywood and the Millions Falling from the Sky
To lend credibility to the fraud, the partners paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to celebrities to promote the coin ($CTR).
The legend of boxing Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled appeared on Instagram holding a fake Centra Card, urging millions to invest in the ICO.
Investor money flooded in like a flood. Overnight, the three young men went from being car renters to living in luxurious penthouses in Miami, wearing wooden and icy Rolex-style watches, and driving ultra-fast cars bought with the Bitcoin and Ethereum they had collected.
Chapter Four: The Thread That Toppled an Empire
It wasn’t the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that exposed them in the beginning, but a journalist at New York Times magazine.
A journalist carried out a simple investigation through search engines and Google images to awaken the world to a shocking revelation: Centra Tech’s CEO does not exist, the photo belongs to someone else entirely, and both Visa and MasterCard deny any connection or contract with Centra Tech!
Panic set in. Instead of backing off or trying to cover things professionally, the partners stumbled around. In April 2018, Robert Farkas felt the hand of justice getting closer.
Chapter Five: The Stupid Escape and the Arrest at the Airport
In scenes reminiscent of dark comedy films, Robert Farkas booked a flight ticket hoping to escape the United States.
Farkas boarded the plane and settled into his seat, believing he had survived with millions intact. But just minutes before the plane doors closed and it took off, federal authorities (the FBI) stormed the aircraft and pulled him from his seat amid the passengers’ shock.
On the same day, Sorab Sharma and Raymond Trappani were arrested. Authorities seized the core evidence: a crypto wallet containing 91,000 Ethereum tokens (worth then more than $60 million), confiscated in full.
Where are they now?
Federal trials in New York led to harsh sentences on charges of financial fraud and forgery:
Sorab "Sam" Sharma (the mastermind) was sentenced to 8 years in federal prison in 2021, along with an order to pay fines and forfeit tens of millions.
Robert Farkas: Sentenced to one year and eleven months in prison (after pleading guilty and cooperating partially).
Raymond Trappani: He decided on full cooperation with the investigations and the submission of damning evidence against Sharma and Farkas. As a result of his cooperation, he escaped a long prison sentence and was issued a sentence of supervised release. He was a key interviewee in the famous Netflix documentary that told their story (Bitconned).
A lesson for the crypto market
The story of Centra Tech remains one of the simplest and strangest fraud cases in the history of financial markets; a constant reminder that marketing flash and celebrities don’t mean there is a real product, and that the "stupidest fraudster" is the one who believes blockchain technology is transparent to the whole world... except to justice!
#Cryptoscam #Rugpull #CentralTech #scam #Binance
