Florida Man 'Bitcoin Rodney' Pleads Guilty Over $1.8 Billion HyperFund Crypto Fraud

A Miami-based man who went by the name “Bitcoin Rodney” pleaded guilty for his role in what prosecutors said was a massive global fraud.

2 min read

Jun 17, 2026

A Florida man known online as "Bitcoin Rodney" pleaded guilty in federal court in Baltimore this week to conspiring to run an unlicensed money transmitting business tied to a $1.8 billion cryptocurrency fraud scheme, according to prosecutors.

The 56-year-old Rodney Burton of Miami, who also has a residence in Prince George's County, Maryland, admitted to promoting HyperFund, a cryptocurrency platform that prosecutors say was in fact a sweeping wire-fraud operation targeting investors around the world.

According to court documents, Burton conspired between June 2020 and January 2022 to provide unlicensed money-transmitting services that helped promote HyperFund, enriching himself in the process. The platform marketed itself to investors as a legitimate crypto investment vehicle, promising daily returns of 0.5% to 1% on "memberships" until an investor's initial stake doubled or tripled.

HyperFund claimed those payouts were funded in part by revenue from large crypto-mining operations that, prosecutors say, never actually existed. By 2021, the company had begun freezing investor withdrawals altogether.

Burton is accused of controlling a network of companies that claimed to provide consulting services, but actually functioned as unlicensed money transmitters funneling investor funds through the scheme. Prosecutors say he personally pocketed more than $7.8 million from the operation, drawing some of those proceeds from Maryland-based victims.

He faces up to five years in prison on the conspiracy charge. Sentencing before U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett is set for July 23. Assistant U.S. Attorney Christina A. Hoffman is prosecuting the case, which authorities said reflects continued scrutiny of cryptocurrency platforms accused of using investment hype to disguise fraud.

According to a report from Rolling Stone, "Bitcoin Rodney" relied on celebrity pals like actor Jamie Foxx and rapper Rick Ross to help boost his profile, and hosted a crypto conference in Miami in 2021 that featured appearances from "Shark Tank" investor Draymond Green, "Wolf of Wall Street" author Jordan Belfort, singer Akon, and comedian Tiffany Haddish.

Get crypto news straight to your inbox--

sign up for the Decrypt Daily below. (It’s free).

Get Email!

SpaceX Surge Could Be Worth Billions for FTX—Will Creditors Benefit?

Some customers harmed by the collapse of crypto exchange FTX under co-founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried are keeping a close eye on SpaceX’s post-IPO performance. As Elon Musk’s rocket-maker has soared far beyond its initial market valuation of $1.77 trillion, the firm’s Wall Street debut has lifted hopes among those tracking the exchange’s bankruptcy proceedings that creditors could walk away with more than previously anticipated. Sunil Kavuri, a British investor who lost around $2 milli...

Nvidia Built Robots That Train Themselves Using AI Coding Agents

A fleet of eight robot arms at Nvidia's GEAR lab spent the past few weeks teaching themselves to insert pins, seat graphics cards, and cut zip ties. The only humans involved were the ones who wrote the paper afterward. The skill came from ENPIRE, a framework detailed in a paper published Tuesday by researchers at Nvidia, Carnegie Mellon University, and UC Berkeley. ENPIRE hands the entire job of training a robot to AI coding agents, the same software that already writes and tests its own code,...

CoinFund, Coinbase Back Stablecoin Payments Startup Trace Finance in $32 Million Raise

Trace Finance, a financial infrastructure company that links banks in Brazil and the United States to stablecoin settlement networks, said Wednesday that it has raised $32 million in a Series A funding round led by CoinFund, with backing from Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, Jump Capital and several other crypto-focused investors. The raise comes as Brazilian regulators reclassify cross-border crypto transfers as foreign-exchange operations, a shift that is pushing institutional money away fro...

News

Courses

Deep Dives

Coins

Videos