The Georgia man was deported from Fiji and returned to U.S. custody after prosecutors accused him of defrauding thousands of investors.
GAINESVILLE, GA — Edward Zimbardi, a Georgia man accused of operating a $165 million cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme, is back in U.S. custody after being deported from Fiji and taken into custody by the FBI, federal prosecutors announced Monday.
Zimbardi, 59, of Flowery Branch, faces 25 federal counts in the Northern District of Georgia. A grand jury indicted him July 8 on 12 counts of wire fraud, 12 counts of money laundering and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. He appeared Monday before a federal magistrate judge in Los Angeles after arriving from Fiji, according to federal authorities and local news reports.
Prosecutors allege Zimbardi created and promoted an investment operation called The Crypto Program between June 2022 and August 2023. Promotional websites and videos allegedly described an opportunity to invest in advertising packages that would provide a guaranteed monthly return of 25%. Investors were directed to transfer cryptocurrency into digital wallets that prosecutors say Zimbardi secretly controlled. Authorities say thousands of investors sent more than $165 million into those wallets.
The government alleges the promised advertising investments were not real. Instead, prosecutors say Zimbardi put more than $34 million into risky foreign currency trades and lost substantial amounts of the money. They also accuse him of using funds from later investors to make payments to earlier investors, a central feature of the Ponzi scheme alleged in the indictment. At least $10 million was spent on personal expenses, prosecutors said, including luxury vehicles, a house purchased for his son and alimony payments.
“Zimbardi allegedly tricked thousands of people to invest in his ‘Crypto Program’ with false promises of enormous returns,” U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg said. Hertzberg said investigators believe Zimbardi used investor money for currency trading, payments to earlier investors and personal expenses before leaving the United States as authorities pursued the case.
The Crypto Program collapsed in August 2023, according to prosecutors, leaving investors unable to recover money they had put into the operation. Zimbardi then traveled through Hawaii, Fiji and other locations, authorities said. Prosecutors allege that after he learned in July 2025 that the FBI was investigating him, he went to Fiji and remained there for more than a year. They also say he canceled plans to attend his son’s wedding in Virginia in May because he believed federal agents would try to arrest him there.
Zimbardi had drawn law enforcement scrutiny before the federal indictment. In March 2024, WSB-TV reported that he had been arrested in the Netherlands on a money laundering matter while Georgia securities officials and other agencies were investigating his investment activities. At the time, Georgia officials said the operation appeared to have characteristics of a Ponzi scheme, while U.S. criminal charges had not yet been filed.
A separate federal civil lawsuit filed in Georgia in 2025 also accused Zimbardi of misleading investors about The Crypto Program. One investor from British Columbia alleged that she put more than $366,000 into the program and lost more than $260,000. The complaint accused those behind the program of falsely representing that investors’ money was safe and would be used for online advertising. Those allegations were made in a civil case and are separate from the criminal indictment announced by federal prosecutors.
Federal authorities say Zimbardi was deported from Fiji on Aug. 14 after Fijian officials learned of the U.S. charges. The operation involved coordination among the FBI, the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs, the State Department, Fijian immigration and police authorities and several U.S. regulatory and law enforcement agencies. FBI Atlanta Special Agent in Charge Marlo Graham said investigators pursued Zimbardi despite his move to the South Pacific.
Local reporting has put the number of people who invested in the program at more than 6,000. Several investors previously described seeing apparent returns before the program failed. Zimbardi told a YouTube program in 2024 that he had been an investor himself and suggested other people were behind the operation. Federal prosecutors dispute that account and say Zimbardi is the only person charged in the 25-count indictment.
Zimbardi is expected to be transferred to Georgia for further proceedings in the federal case. Prosecutors have sought to keep him in U.S. Marshals Service custody while the case moves forward. The FBI is collecting information from people who invested in The Crypto Program as investigators assess losses and potential restitution. The indictment contains allegations, and Zimbardi is presumed innocent unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Author note: Last updated August 17, 2026.