Publicly shared documents released ahead of the upcoming extradition of notorious crypto Ponzi schemer Do Kwon reveal the stupid turn of events that led to his arrest and that of his compatriot, Joon Chang.
Attempting to leave Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, on a private jet in March of 2023, Kwon and Chang were stopped at a border crossing when they presented fake Costa Rican passports. The pair were attempting to fly to Dubai, the known home of Changpeng Zhao (colloquially known as CZ), founder and former CEO of Binance.
After having their luggage confiscated and searched, further problematic documents were discovered, including invalidated South Korean and Belgian passports which included totally different personal information for the two. Indeed, according to these passports, Kwon was called ‘Frederic Nguyen’ and Chang was called ‘Thomas Wang.’
Some of the countries in which Do Kwon has been seen or are seeking his extradition.
Read more: Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon beats extradition again
The pair’s South Korean passports were run through a database which marked them as having Interpol red flags.
Judge isn’t swayed
As a defense, the duo stated that Montenegrin authorities should immediately get in touch with Costa Rican immigration to prove that their passports were real. However, when the Montenegrin authorities did just that, they were told in no uncertain terms that the passports were forged.
Kwon and Chang told authorities that not only had they been assured by their Singaporean agent that the Costa Rican passports were authentic, but that they had reached out to the agency when they realized there were discrepancies on the Belgian passports, like completely different names.
Toward the end of the publicly shared documents, the Montenegrin judge calls the defendants’ arguments “calculated attempts to avoid guilt” and states that “the accused carried these documents critical to their situation in their personal luggage without providing the court with any logical explanation for doing so.”
Kwon is expected to be extradited to the United States by the end of March and a similar, if not shorter timeline, is expected for the extradition of Chang to the Republic of Korea.
