iComTech promoter Juan Arellano has received a time served sentence and three years of supervised release.

$1.74 million already seized by the US government is forfeited. And Arellano is jointly liable for $789,218 in restitution.

iComTech was an MLM crypto Ponzi that collapsed in mid to late 2019. Arellano pled guilty to iComTech criminal charges in February 2024.

Arellano’s sentencing was held on September 30th. It followed the respective sentencing of co-defendants

Arellano’s restitution order sees him jointly liable with co-defendants Carmona, Ochoa, Moses Valdez, Brend and Rodriguez.

Moses Valdez is the last remaining iComTech scammer to be sentenced. I don’t have a sentencing date but Valdez filed a sentencing submission on October 9th.

Moses Valdez is a 29-year-old manager at an autobody shop in Hesperia, a blue-collar community in California’s Central Valley.

He grew up poor, began working right after high school.

As a Jehovah’s Witness wearing ill-fitting clothing, Moses was an outcast at school. He dabbled in day trading in his mid20s and then “multi-level marketing”—various iterations of pyramid schemes—first through quasi-legitimate Amway and then in connection with three phony cryptocurrency promoters, AirBit Club, IcomTech, and a scheme he began on his own, Nebula.

Moses went back and forth from supporting himself as a stock clerk and waiting tables to participating in glittering overseas promotions meant to dazzle unwary, unsophisticated investors.

Since his arrest, Mr. Valdez returned to honest work. He is now in a serious relationship with a woman he has known since childhood, drug free, and desperate to make things right with the people hurt by the schemes he participated in, including his own family members.

Juan Arellano was Moses Valdez’s AirBit Club and iComTech upline.

AirBit Club was another MLM crypto Ponzi scheme. Co-founders Renato Rodriguez and Gutemberg dos Santos were sentenced to prison in 2023.

After IcomTech failed, Moses tried one more time to set up his own crypto trading scheme.

This time he was a leader in the scheme, working with Alex Mendoza and Gustavo Rodriguez, who handled the technical work for IcomTech and built a nearly identical website for Nebula.

According to the PSR, Nebula’s victims lost about $30,000.

Moses gave up on raising money from others after Nebula, but continued committing fraud.

In 2022, he set up merchant accounts for receiving credit card payments and used them to max out non-existent purchases from his own personal credit cards.

Throughout the relevant time period he sold Bitcoin … earning a fee of 2-5%. He never obtained a proper license or submitted transactions reports.

Valdez testified against David Brend and Gustavo Rodriguez at their respective trials.

Valdez is seeking the same iComTech sentence Arellano received; time served and a “short term of supervised release”.