A Nebraska man has been sentenced to one year and in some unspecified time in the future in detention center for running a mountainous-scale illegal “cryptojacking” plan that defrauded two main cloud computing services out of additional than $3.5 million rate of computing sources, which he outmoded to mine on the topic of $1 million in cryptocurrency.
Charles O. Parks III, 46, furthermore known online as “CP3O,” pleaded responsible in December 2024 to wire fraud after being indicted earlier that year. He first and most well-known faced a most sentence of 30 years.
Crypto Influencer Sentenced to Jail for Multi-Million Greenback “Cryptojacking” Plan https://t.co/Ih8LmvzCdR (Announced with @NewYorkFBI and @NYPDnews)
— US Attorney EDNY (@EDNYnews) August 15, 2025
Parks will forfeit $500,000 and a Mercedes-Benz luxury automobile bought with proceeds from the plan. Restitution will probably be optimistic later.
“Charles Parks III stole extra than $3.5 million rate of sources to illegally mine one more million in cryptocurrency for inner most luxurious purchases,” acknowledged Christopher G. Raia, Assistant Director-in-Charge of the FBI’s New York Self-discipline Office.
“Whereas Parks gloated all over social media platforms, he did no longer level out his purported success used to be rooted in deceit and theft,” Raia added.
What is cryptojacking?
Cryptojacking is the unauthorized use of one more celebration’s computing sources, comparable to servers or cloud infrastructure, to mine cryptocurrency. Prosecutors acknowledged that between January and August 2021, Parks created fallacious corporations and accounts to trick cloud services into granting him excessive-stage computing vitality, which he then exploited to mine Ethereum, Litecoin and Monero.
Parks outmoded email addresses linked to shell entities comparable to “MultiMillionaire LLC” and “CP3O LLC” to form and support accounts with cloud computing corporations.
He misled services with claims that he used to be constructing a mountainous-scale online education platform serving thousands of college students, when of route he used to be running mining scripts. When confronted about odd data utilization and unpaid bills, he persevered to deflect inquiries.
The illegally mined cryptocurrency used to be then laundered through exchanges, NFT marketplaces and usual banks. Parks spent the remodeled proceeds on luxury purchases, along side jewelry, resorts and lunge, whereas cultivating a web persona as a crypto influencer.
His now defunct X, Fb and Instagram accounts described him as “Skilled. Media. Skills. Strategy. Consultant.” as he boasted about his earnings.
In a 2022 YouTube video, he bragged that he had written a “surely good crypto script” in ten days that allowed him to steer determined of working for the relaxation of the year.
