Scamurai Weekly: ICO-era scammers are making a comeback
This week I look at Centra Tech, Ryan Fournier's "I'm new to crypto" nonsense, and being denied access to Consensus.
Hey folks,
Over the Chinese New Year holidays, I finally got around to watching Bitconned, a Netflix documentary from last year about Centra Tech.
If you haven’t seen it, Centra Tech was an ICO-era scam that claimed to be developing a crypto debit card. In reality, it fabricated partnerships with Visa, faked its founders' credentials, and even invented a CEO (and then pretended he died). Of the three guys behind it, two were sentenced to jail. The third, Ray Trapani, avoided prison after cooperating with the investigation.
I was curious whether Trapani had reformed so I did a bit of digging.
He hasn’t.
He now runs a web3 consulting company called We Run the Internet. Two different LinkedIn profiles list him as either the CEO or a strategic advisor. Despite launching just last year, the company claims over 5,343 satisfied clients and offers services like memecoin development, KOL recruitment, and exchange listings. A consultation call costs USD 50 if anyone fancies it.
Trapani also spends his time shilling shitcoins on X and retweeting wisdom like: "If people don’t call you a scammer, you’re ngmi."
Trapani additionally runs a Telegram crypto investment channel—where traders ostensibly get trade recommendations but are often little more than channels advertising paid-for pumps—called Trap Calls, which has over 2,000 members.
A second thing from the documentary also caught my attention. When Centra Tech’s founders realised they were in trouble, they hired “lawyer” Eric Pope to advise them on dealing with regulators—who turned out to be a college student named John Lambert running a fake law firm.
Yes, the scammers got scammed.
Lambert was a co-founder of Students for Trump alongside Ryan Fournier. Fournier was initially named as a co-conspirator in the law firm scam but, like Trapani, cut a deal with prosecutors and got away with it.
If the name sounds familiar, it’s because Fournier has been in hot water recently over his involvement in a pump-and-dump scam.
Fournier worked with a memecoin creator who launched a TikTok-themed memecoin after the US lifted its TikTok ban. The price skyrocketed, and then Fournier dumped a huge amount—cashing out around $700,000 into Solana (he denies profiting).
His defense?
Sure.
He’s not new to crypto. He’s been tweeting about it since at least 2021. He’s shared multiple posts about Bitcoin and Dogecoin, commented on the benefits of the government holding Tether, and discussed crypto betting site Polymarket.
Among his many pro-crypto takes:
April 2021: Urged followers not to sell $DOGE and to "make it the next Bitcoin" when it hit $0.23. (Though he spelled it dodgecoin, so make of that what you will.)
May 2023: "Crypto is the way to go."
October 2023: "Crypto is the future of finance."
He’s also posted about Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht’s release and last year’s Restore the Republic crypto project.
And, for good measure, one of the many full-time jobs listed on his LinkedIn is as the marketing director of Uncensored AI, an LLM project. It has a token launch “coming soon”. I can’t wait.
Elsewhere
I was going to write about DeepSeek this week, but the endless AI-generated “hot takes” on LinkedIn killed my enthusiasm.
Yes, we all know you’re using AI to write your posts. Yes, a Chinese company doesn’t recognise Taiwan as a country. Water is wet.
The crypto conference Consensus is coming up in Hong Kong in a few weeks. If you’re around and want to grab a coffee, boba or beer, let me know. My press pass application got denied (shocking, can’t think why), but I’ll be around.
Looking for Writers
I’m looking for some freelance journalists to contribute to Scamurai. Particularly interested in writers based in East and Southeast Asia who can cover local scams, fraud cases, and consumer rights issues in tech.
Don’t care where you went to school or who you’ve worked for. My only requirements:
You must be able to string a sentence together in English.
You must be fluent in the language of the country you’re based in/will be covering (i.e., you can read documents, make calls, and conduct interviews—not just order a pint).
Some ability to do journalism.
Email callan@scamurai.io with the following:
A cover letter (just a few paragraphs, no need for anything fancy)
Some original writing samples (choose pieces where you did some investigating and interviewed people, not just rewrote something Reuters did first)
One pitch you think would fit Scamurai (look here, here and here for the sort of thing I’m looking for)
Students are welcome. Pay starts at HKD$200/hr.
Final notes
Will be back to normal and publishing more regularly from later this week.
恭喜發財 / Wishing you to get wealthy (but not through memecoins. Seriously. Stop buying memecoins so I can do more worthwhile things like exposing oat milk as a scam instead*).
Cheers,
Callan
*Buy rolling oats, soak a handful in water overnight, squeeze it through a cheesecloth/strainer bag. Congrats, you just made Oatly for a tenth of the price.