The luxury cars, watches and other extensive possessions of the Central Florida man accused of operating a $328-million cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme will not be surrendered but instead will be frozen while his court cases proceeds \u2014 in part because some of those assets are in the war-wracked Mideast, a federal judge ruled Thursday.<\/p>\n
Christopher Alexander Delgado, the former CEO of the Goliath Ventures cryptocurrency firm, found himself back in federal court in Orlando for the first time since his Feb. 24 arrest.<\/a> The hearing was to discuss prosecutors\u2019 request<\/a> that Delgado surrender items on a seven-page list as a condition of his continued pretrial release.<\/p>\n Among the items are 18 ultra-expensive watches, including 10 Rolexes and five Swiss-crafted Audemars Piguet timepieces, and a dozen vehicles including a Ferrari, Lamborghini and two Rolls Royces.<\/p>\n Delgado and his attorneys did not oppose the prosecutors\u2019 move, but U.S. District Judge Leslie Hoffman Price did not approve the surrender of his property. One concern she had was the logistics of turning over property currently in Dubai, where Goliath had an office, given the Iran conflict.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the embassy over there has more important business than watches,\u201d Price said.<\/p>\n The U.S. Consulate in Dubai was closed as of Wednesday due to \u201cthe threat of armed conflict,\u201d according to its website.<\/p>\n Price said she was surprised to see such an extensive list of assets and had reservations about whether that much property, some of which is registered to Goliath or to Delgado\u2019s family members, could be turned over in a timely manner. She was also concerned she would be exceeding her authority, if she ordered the assets surrendered at this stage of the court process.<\/p>\n Prosecutor Hannah Watson argued the surrender of the items was necessary to prevent their destruction as they were evidence of money laundering, one of the charges Delgado is facing. The purchases were traced to money from Goliath, Watson said.<\/p>\n Federal investigators say Delgado lived a life of luxury \u2014 his recent property purchases include several multi-million-dollar homes in Central Florida \u2014 by misappropriating his investors\u2019 money.<\/p>\n Delgado has not yet entered a plea, and he and his attorneys didn\u2019t answer reporters\u2019 questions as they left the courthouse.<\/p>\n Watson said the surrender of property would also ensure Delgado\u2019s cooperation and prevent him from fleeing with the items.<\/p>\n But the judge wasn\u2019t convinced.<\/p>\n \u201cTo ensure cooperation when he\u2019s already cooperating?\u201d Price asked. \u201cHe\u2019s out\u2026he\u2019s here\u2026where\u2019s the flight risk?\u201d<\/p>\n Price issued an official order later Thursday afternoon that would bar Delgado from selling or transferring any of the assets on the list.<\/p>\n Delgado\u2019s attorney, Sean Shecter, said repeatedly during the hearing that Delgado was supporting the request to surrender the assets because he wanted to assuage prosecutors\u2019 concerns and comply with Price\u2019s earlier order about his release conditions to turn over certain property. He said a willingness to surrender the property was not admitting guilt.<\/p>\n Delgado, wearing aviator sunglasses, departed in a car appearing to be a Cadillac Escalade V emblazoned with Goliath\u2019s logo, one of the vehicles prosecutors wanted him to turn over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The luxury cars, watches and other extensive possessions of the Central Florida man accused of operating a $328-million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[112,28,114,266,115,1335,139,141,140,109],"class_list":{"0":"post-179865","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-latest-headlines","11":"tag-local-news","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-orange-county","14":"tag-orlando","15":"tag-orlando-headlines","16":"tag-orlando-news","17":"tag-social"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}