Crypto scam: Men from Beverly Hills, Thousand Oaks accused of bilking investors out of $22 million

A Beverly Hills resident and a Thouand Oaks man were charged in an indictment unsealed Friday with bilking investors out of more than $22 million in cryptocurrency through various online scams.

Gabriel Hay, 23, of Beverly Hills, and Gavin Mayo, 23, of Thousand Oaks, were each charged with a single count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, two counts of wire fraud and one count of stalking, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Prosecutors said the pair engaged in a series of “rugpulls,” in which the creator of an NFT — nonfungible token — or other digital asset solicits people to invest in the projects, but then abruptly scrubs the project and keeps the money.

According to the US Attorney’s Office, Hay and Mayo sponsored several such projects between May 2021 and May 2024, and allegedly made various false statements or claims to entice investors. In one case, the pair promoted a “Vault of Gems NFT” project, but they “allegedly abandoned the projects after collecting millions in funds from investors,” prosecutors said in a statement.

The pair also allegedly tried to conceal their activities by trying to hide their involvement in some of the project, instead identifying other people as the owners. Prosecutors said that when a project manager involved in an NFT project exposed Hay and Mayo as the people behind it, the defendants allegedly “embarked on a harassment campaign against the project manager, sending or causing the sending of messages to the project manager and his parents for the purpose of intimidating him and his family and causing them great emotional distress.”

The defendants face up to 20 years in prison for each of the conspiracy and wire fraud counts, and five years on the stalking count.