Hailing from San Diego, California; Rikesh Thapa, co-founder, Blockparty, is reportedly arrested in Southern California, over monetary fraud charges. Thapa, Blockparty’s ex-Chief Technology Officer (CTO), faces allegations of stealing from Blockparty $1 million (in cash and cryptocurrency).
Blockparty, a Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) marketplace platform, was co-founded by Rikesh Thapa in 2017. Facing one count of wire fraud, Thapa left Blockparty in 2019.
He did not agree upon giving the $1 million company funds he had kept in his bank account back, the U.S. prosecutors state. Meanwhile, Blockparty began scouting for another bank.
The U.S. Prosecutors allege in a Manhattan Federal Court, in an unsealed indictment, that the $1 million in question were in a “safekeeping” of Thapa. In the meantime, Blockparty went on to scout for diversified banking options, if its primary bank ceased supporting crypto entities.
Sadly, the case in question pops-up when the community is barely recuperating from the catastrophic FTX mess.
While the federal public defender’s office in San Diego generally tends to represent defendants following their arrest. In this case, it reportedly didn’t respond to a comment request. A Blockparty representative also refrained from entertaining a comment request.
Thapa is reported to have spent the money on travel activities, nightclubs, shopping clothes, etc., prosecutors maintain. But that’s not all, there’s more.
Thapa also faces allegations of stealing funds in Bitcoin (BTC) from Blockparty. In this case, he reportedly went on to cover-up the trail by deleting the email account of Blockparty’s chief executive.
As per the U.S. prosecutors, in July 2019, Thapa went to Italy with the intention of selling the native crypto of Blockparty without an explicit consent. The money in question, though, turned out to be counterfeit.
Thapa may well face a prison time of over 20 years upon conviction in wire fraud charge.
Blockparty is a blockchain-based event ticketing platform headquartered in New Jersey. The company’s NFT marketplace platform was launched in 2020, as stated on its website.
