Riccardo Spagni, the inventor of Monero, has refuted rumors that he was an Interpol agent.
Riccardo Spagni, the inventor of Monero, has refuted charges that he was an informant who assisted Interpol and other government authorities in tracing funds.
James Edwards, a crypto influencer, said in a thread that Spagni exposed himself as an Interpol informant after being imprisoned by U.S. Marshals for extradition.
20th March tweet from James Edwards with news from 2021. Based on the information, he concluded that Riccardo Spagni, the inventor of Monero, may be an Interpol informant.
In August of 2021, Riccardo “Fluffypony” Spagni was apprehended in the United States. After accusations of crimes that initially arose in 2009, the well-known crypto figure was arrested. He was purportedly evading South African fraud accusations.
Former employer Cape Cookies accused Spagni of falsifying invoices and committing fraud. Between October 2009 and June 2011, Fluffypony reportedly stole $100,000, according to court documents.
Edwards used this case to support some of his ideas. In response to South Africa’s request for extradition, Spagni’s counsel postponed the trial and cited COVID-19 dangers. Before the hearing in March 2021, Edwards said Spagni and his wife departed South Africa. Moreover, he said their fear of the virus prohibited them from going solely to South Africa, not Bermuda. Edwards observed that their trip included an unforgettable stay in the United States.
Edwards said, “I exposed @mymonero (project founded by @fluffypony) as a “wallet” that stole funds and deanonymized users based on the asset tracing requests.”
Notably, the crypto analyst used GPT-4 to make some of these conclusions. In the meanwhile, author and analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb retweeted the claims. If Monero’s principal maintainer turns out to be an Interpol informant, the “Black Swam” author’s assertion that every Bitcoin transaction can be tracked may be true.
In response to the charges, the inventor of Monero, ‘fluffypony,’ referred to James Edward as “brain dead.” Regarding the costs, Spagni said, “This nonsense post is unsurprising, coming from a well-known con artist.”
He also mocked the influencer for “analyzing” the reports using ChatGPT’s GPT-4. The creator of Monero denied the allegations, stating, “At no time have I ever met with or assisted a law enforcement agency, a government, an individual, a government agency, a company, or ANYONE to trace Monero.”
The creator defended Monero’s encryption, stating that he could not provide “privileged access” to the authorities.
However, Spagni acknowledged in Edwards’ thread that Interpol had requested his help but “never specified what they needed assistance with.”
In response, the creator noted, “They never replied with any specifics, nor did they contact me to inform me of the nature of the request. It may have had nothing to do with Monero; I genuinely have no clue what it was about.”
According to Crunchbase, Spagni invented and registered Monero in Australia in 2014. Monero suffered a hard fork in August last year to include several privacy enhancements. In October 2022, Monero developers were suspected of being behind an assault against Zcash.
