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FILE-A Bitcoin logo is displayed at a cryptocurrency office in Madrid, Spain, Saturday, June 20, 2026. (Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The Justice Department is considering dropping charges against a Colorado man accused of running a cryptocurrency fraud that allegedly netted him $722 million.
Matthew Goettsche and several others were indicted in 2019 over allegations that he defrauded investors with his crypto mining company, BitClub Network. It rewarded investors who recruited new members, prosecutors said, which is the classic structure of a Ponzi scheme.
In a sharp reversal, the assistant attorney general’s office in Washington ordered the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey to dismiss the case with prejudice, two people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg Law.
The first public sign that the charges were no longer being pursued came Wednesday, when Goettsche’s attorneys filed a motion informing the judge that they had “reached an agreement in principle to resolve the pending charges.”
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According to sources who spoke to Bloomberg Law, Goettsche has assembled a team of lawyers with ties to the Trump administration who could push for relief from the DOJ.
Fox News Digital has contacted the DOJ for comment.
Emily Covington, a DOJ spokesperson, denied that the decision to drop the charges had anything to do with “any alleged pressure from Goettsche’s lawyers” in a statement to Bloomberg Law.
She also said the DOJ regularly evaluates ongoing cases and that the government is in the process of recovering “a substantial amount owed to investors.”
It’s a stunning change since February, when prosecutors sent the court a letter saying a jury trial was necessary.
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“The indictment concerns a global fraudulent scheme based on false promises that the victims’ hundreds of millions of dollars of investments would be used to generate income through cryptocurrency mining,” prosecutors wrote in the letter, signed by then-Assistant Attorney General Todd Blanche.
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