Subject to an FBI investigation and a 21-count indictment including charges of securities and wire fraud, a 26-year-old Nathan Gauvin is accused of stealing more than $42 million from investors and creditors in a crypto-currency-based Ponzi scheme.<\/p>\n
A 26-year-old man charged in a multi-million-dollar crypto-currency ponzi scheme in the United States is likely from Sudbury, a graduate of Lockeby Composite School.<\/p>\n
While other news outlets have stated the man, Nathan Gauvin, is from Sudbury, Sudbury.com could not definitively confirm his birthplace from available public records (more our efforts in this regard below). Gauvin is facing a 21-count-indictment<\/a> including accusations of securities and wire fraud, indications are that he is from the Nickel City, and that his two co-conspirators are also Canadian. Their names are known only to the Eastern New York district Grand Jury that indicted Gauvin.<\/p>\n The charges stem from Gauvin\u2019s alleged roles in defrauding hundreds of investors in a web-based investment company called Gray Digital Capital Management Inc. (Gray Digital) and in a subsequent scheme to defraud a New York-based financial technology company to obtain credit from two banks insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.<\/p>\n In total, Gauvin is accused of fraudulently raising more than $42 million from Gray Digital investors and obtaining more than $800,000 in credit from lenders.<\/p>\n Gauvin was arrested Dec 10 in England on a provisional arrest warrant issued from the Eastern District of New York.<\/p>\n The 21-count indictment includes charges of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud, securities fraud, wire fraud, investment advisor fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice and \u201caggravated identity theft.\u201d<\/p>\n The charges in the indictment are allegations and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.<\/p>\n The Ponzi scheme, Crypto-style<\/p>\n Gauvin, also known as “defigray” and “gray,” is named in an indictment that alleges that between May 2022 and October 2024 (approximately, reads the indictment), Guavin, together with others, defrauded investors in Gray Digital, a web-based investment company, and Gray Digital’s flagship fund, the Gray Fund.<\/p>\n Gauvin, who listed himself as Gray Digital’s founder and chief executive officer, \u201clied to investors about Gray Digital’ s assets and returns and his background and experience and provided investors with fraudulent documents intended to verify Gray Digital’s assets and performance,\u201d reads the indictment.<\/p>\n However, Gauvin used most investor deposits to pay investor withdrawals and misappropriated millions in investor funds, \u201cwhich he spent on luxury goods, jewelry, and his personal credit card bills,\u201d states the indictment.<\/p>\n In the release from the States\u2019 Attorney\u2019s office, they offer an example. \u201cGauvin and Gray Digital made false claims that the Gray Fund had a cumulative return since inception of 4,384 per cent and that Gray Digital\u2019s holdings had been verified by an audit firm when, in reality, the asset attestations (evidences) were based on doctored bank and brokerage statements provided by Gauvin and others to the audit firm and not independently verified,\u201d reads a release from the Eastern District of New York\u2019s US attorney\u2019s office. \u201cGauvin raised at least $42 million from investors based on these false claims.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, between approximately May 2025 and June 2025, the indictment states Gauvin and his two Canadian co-conspirators \u201cprovided fraudulent bank statements and other false information\u201d to a New York-based financial technology company, so they could get more credit, to the tune of $1.5 million.<\/p>\n Then, more false documents, this time for two banks, earning him $800,000 in credit, the indictment states.<\/p>\n \u201cAmong other things,\u201d states the indictment, Gauvin used the proceeds from this credit to pay personal expenses, \u201cincluding to a private members-only social club in London, England,\u201d reads the indictment.<\/p>\n And though digital currency adds a modern twist, the ponzi scheme, named for Charles Ponzi, who duped investors in the 1920s with a postage stamp speculation scheme, is still at the heart of the case.<\/p>\n According to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) a Ponzi scheme<\/a> is an investment fraud that pays existing investors with funds collected from new investors. Ponzi scheme perpetrators sell the investment as one with high returns or little risk, but they don\u2019t invest the money. Instead, they use it to pay those who invested earlier and may keep some for themselves.<\/p>\n With little or no legitimate earnings, Ponzi schemes require a constant flow of new money to survive. When it becomes hard to recruit new investors, or when large numbers of existing investors cash out, \u201cthese schemes tend to collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n And that\u2019s exactly what happened, at least according to the indictment, to Gauvin and Gray Digital.<\/p>\n Get caught? \u2018Double down\u2019<\/p>\n After Gray Digital collapsed in 2024, and before he got more credit in 2025, Gauvin \u201cobstructed and attempted to obstruct a SEC investigation into the fraud by providing the SEC with fraudulent documents,\u201d reads the indictment.<\/p>\n \u201cAs alleged, the defendant\u2019s investment company was a house of cards constructed with investor funds and held together with lies,\u201d said Nocella in the release. \u201cWhen his house of cards collapsed, Gauvin doubled down by obstructing the regulator\u2019s investigation and trying to defraud a lender. Gauvin\u2019s run of lies ends today.\u201d<\/p>\n Who is Nathan Gauvin and how do we know he is from Sudbury?<\/p>\n Though there is a Nathan Gauvin who is listed as a student at Lockerby Composite School in the 2016\/2017 Rainbow District School Board Annual Report, no photo is provided for comparison against a known image of the accused Gauvin.<\/p>\n There is a LinkedIn page with his photo<\/a>, but the profile lists New York, New York as his current address.<\/p>\n However, in 2024, DL News,<\/a> an independent news organization reporting on the world of cryptocurrency and decentralised finance, followed the breadcrumbs available<\/a> which pointed to Gauvin as a former resident of Sudbury. They found a Facebook page<\/a> which at the time was public. It showed Gauvin\u2019s name, photo and at the time, listed him as being from Sudbury. The Facebook page is now private, though the photo is visible and appears to be the same man as in the LinkedIn photo. They also note that one of their<\/p>\n Written Nov. 15, 2024, the article begins \u201cCrypto investors are raising the alarm after a fund they invested in is refusing to return their deposits,\u201d before stating that the fund run by Gauvin, Gray Digital had received more than $42 million<\/a> from about 1,000 depositors since it launched in June 2022.<\/p>\n \u201cThe 25-year-old CEO of a New York hedge fund called Blackridge, dazzled investors with records of almost 200 per cent<\/a> yearly returns on deposits,\u201d the article reads. It states that Gray Digital said it earns returns by trading \u201cstocks, derivatives, debt, and crypto.\u201d However, \u201cnow, six depositors have told DL News that they can\u2019t withdraw their funds. Dozens more have banded together on messaging app Discord to share their experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n Several investors told DL News that Gauvin \u201cignored their requests for evidence of the company\u2019s asset holdings,\u201d and \u201cscreenshots seen by DL News confirm the investors\u2019 requests; additional screenshots of conversations in Gray Digital\u2019s server on Discord show Gauvin blaming the situation on bad actors, said DL News. \u201cCoordinated mass withdrawals, conspiracy theories\u201d he is quoted as stating on the app. \u201cThese people are just going day by day and feeding their \u2018intel\u2019 to users to inflict as much damage as possible to the platform,\u201d Gauvin said in Discord on August 26, 2024 (per a screenshot viewed by DL News.)<\/p>\n And if the Gauvin charged is a hometown kid, in addition to saying his fund called Blackridge had billions of dollars in assets under management, Gauvin also asserted that he was involved in Blackstone\u2019s $26 billion acquisition of Hilton Hotels in 2007, \u201caccording to screenshots of since-deleted Discord posts viewed by DL News.\u201d<\/p>\n If this Nathan Gauvin is the same one running Gray Digital, it means he couldn\u2019t have been older than 10 at the time of Blackstone\u2019s acquisition of Hilton Hotels.<\/p>\n \u201cBlackstone didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment,\u201d writes DL News. Neither did Lockerby Composite School when they were asked by the crypto-news outlet.<\/p>\n The case is being prosecuted by the New York States\u2019 Attorney\u2019s Business and Securities Fraud Section. Per their release: \u201cIf you believe that you or someone you know was victimized by Gauvin, please contact the FBI.\u201d You can find a link to their website here. <\/a><\/p>\n Jenny Lamothe is a reporter at Sudbury.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Subject to an FBI investigation and a 21-count indictment including charges of securities and wire fraud, a 26-year-old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48,149239,149240,15014],"class_list":{"0":"post-341312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-nathan-gauvin","12":"tag-ponzi-scheme-accusation","13":"tag-sudbury"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}