Las Vegas businessman Brent Kovar convicted of defrauding 400 investors out of $24M through fake AI crypto mining scheme; faces up to 280 years in prison.
Regulation & Gov ·
Brent C. Kovar, a Las Vegas businessman, has been convicted of orchestrating a $24 million investment fraud that affected at least 400 investors through his company Profit Connect. The operation, which ran from late 2017 through July 2021, presented itself as using artificial intelligence and supercomputing technology to generate cryptocurrency mining returns. A federal jury found Kovar guilty on 11 wire fraud counts, 2 mail fraud counts, and 2 money laundering counts after a nine-day trial, with sentencing scheduled for November 30, 2026.
Kovar marketed the scheme by assuring investors of annual gains between 15% and 30%, along with a full refund guarantee, while claiming the enterprise held hundreds of millions in crypto reserves—claims prosecutors established were fabricated. Rather than conducting legitimate mining operations, Kovar diverted investor capital toward personal acquisitions, including a house purchase and employee gifts, while using new deposits to repay earlier investors in a pattern designed to conceal the operation's true nature. He also falsely stated that investments carried FDIC insurance protection.
The maximum sentence Kovar faces is 280 years in prison. In a related case, Japheth Dillman was separately convicted of wire fraud for deceiving more than 20 investors of nearly $1 million through misrepresentations about Block Bits Capital, a crypto trading fund operating between June 2017 and August 2018, and is scheduled for sentencing on December 8, 2026, with exposure to up to 20 years imprisonment.