A guaranteed 25% a month — the promise at the center of a $165 million crypto fraud case

The US Justice Department says the man it accuses of running a $165 million crypto Ponzi scheme has been deported from Fiji and has appeared in federal court. Prosecutors allege that Edward Zimbardi, 59, of Flowery Branch, Georgia, promoted a program advertising a guaranteed 25% monthly return and told investors to send cryptocurrency into wallets he secretly controlled. He faces 12 counts of wire fraud, 12 counts of money laundering and one count of money laundering conspiracy from a July indictment. These are allegations that have not been proven in court.

According to prosecutors, the operation ran from June 2022 to August 2023 under the name The Crypto Program, marketed through videos and websites that pitched advertising packages carrying the guaranteed monthly return. Participants were told to fund their purchases by sending crypto into wallets Zimbardi controlled, and the government says thousands of people ultimately moved more than $165 million into them. Instead of buying advertising, prosecutors allege, he gambled more than $34 million on risky foreign-currency trades and paid earlier investors with money from newer ones — the defining mechanic of a Ponzi scheme — while spending at least $10 million on himself, including a house for his son, luxury vehicles and alimony payments.

The scheme collapsed in August 2023 and Zimbardi traveled abroad, the Justice Department says, settling in Fiji after learning of an FBI investigation in July 2025. Prosecutors say he skipped his son's wedding in Virginia in May 2026, correctly suspecting agents would be waiting for him there. Fijian authorities deported him to the United States on Aug. 14, working with the FBI and the State Department. The FBI has asked people who invested to come forward.

For a beginner, the value of this case is the shape of it, not the size. Three warning signs sit right on the surface. First, a fixed guaranteed monthly return — real investments do not work that way, and the more precise and generous the promise, the more reliably it is false. Second, a respectable-sounding wrapper story, here advertising packages, that explains where the money supposedly comes from. Third, the instruction to send crypto to a wallet that someone else controls.

That third one is worth keeping as a rule. The moment your coins land in an address whose keys belong to another person, you are no longer trusting the blockchain, you are trusting them, and the transaction cannot be reversed. Hold funds in a wallet whose keys you control, treat the word guaranteed as a warning rather than a feature, and if you think you were caught up in something like this, take it to law enforcement through official channels.