David Carmona

What the public record shows

David Carmona, founder of IcomTech, was convicted and sentenced to 121 months (just over 10 years) in federal prison in the Southern District of New York. This is a criminal conviction — not an allegation.

The scheme

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York:

• IcomTech launched in 2018 as a purported cryptocurrency mining and trading platform, promising investors guaranteed daily returns and claiming their money would double within six months.
• In reality, no legitimate trading or mining activity generated these returns — the platform was a fraud from the outset.
• Investor funds were instead used to make Ponzi-style payments to earlier investors and to enrich Carmona and his co-promoters.
• The scheme primarily targeted working-class, Spanish-speaking investors with little prior cryptocurrency experience — a documented pattern of affinity-style targeting.
• Several co-defendants and senior promoters were separately convicted and sentenced in the same case, including terms of 71 months, 10 years, and 8 years for other participants.

Where the case stands

Carmona was sentenced on October 4, 2024 to 121 months in federal prison plus three years of supervised release.

Why we rate this 1 / 10 — Avoid

A criminal conviction with a 121-month federal sentence for orchestrating a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme that specifically targeted inexperienced, Spanish-speaking investors with fabricated guaranteed-return promises.

Red flags this case teaches

• “Guaranteed” returns and a fixed doubling timeline (“double your money in 6 months”) are structurally impossible for legitimate trading or mining and are a hallmark of Ponzi schemes, in crypto or any other asset class.
• Affinity targeting — pitching a specific language or community group through trusted local networks — is a common fraud tactic precisely because it exploits trust that substitutes for independent verification.
• Multiple co-defendants sentenced in the same scheme shows this was an organized promotional operation, not a single bad actor — check whether other names associated with a platform have their own adjudicated records too.

Bottom line

Convicted and sentenced to over 10 years in federal prison for founding a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme built on fabricated guaranteed returns, targeting inexperienced investors through affinity-based marketing.

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