A Connecticut man has been indicted in connection with a cryptocurrency scheme in which authorities allege he solicited investments from multiple people and lost more than $900,000 of their money on a gambling website.
Elmin Redzepagic, 24, of Wolcott appeared on Thursday in federal court in Hartford where he pleaded not guilty to all charges, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut.
On Jan. 20, a federal grand jury in New Haven returned an indictment charging Redzepagic with seven counts of wire fraud, 11 counts of international money laundering and three counts of making a false statement to IRS Criminal Investigation agents.
Officials allege Redzepagic — who recently lived in Florida — was involved in a fraud scheme between May 2021 and March 2025. According to authorities, he allegedly represented himself as a cryptocurrency investor who earned high rates of return.
Once Redzepagic had investments from multiple victims, he allegedly told them they had earned a “substantial profit” but had to pay additional fees, referred to as “gas fees,” to withdraw it, authorities said.
“Redzepagic claimed to work as part of a team that included someone known as ‘The Chef,’ who supposedly led the operation and determined who, how, and when investors would receive their profits,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office wrote in a statement.
According to officials, Redzepagic did not invest victims’ funds in cryptocurrency and instead transferred them to Stake.com, an offshore gambling platform. Authorities allege he used the gambling site to receive and hold proceeds of the scheme, to generate cryptocurrency addresses for victims to use to transfer Bitcoin to him and to make large “lulling” payments to victims throughout the course of the scheme.
Investigators believe Redzepagic lost a total of about $950,000 worth of funds from multiple victims on the gambling site. During an interview with IRS Criminal Investigation agents in September 2023, he allegedly made several false statements, officials said.
The charges Redzepagic faces expose him to a total of 375 years in prison, authorities noted. He is free on a $500,000 bond.