(SRN NEWS/REUTERS/97.5 GLORY FM) – A Flowery Branch man has been deported from Fiji to face charges in Georgia accusing him of defrauding more than 6,000 investors and causing more than $165 million of losses in a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme, the U.S. attorney in Atlanta said on Monday.
It’s not the first time Edward Zimbardi’s alleged such involvement has drawn the attention of authorities in the U.S. as well as in Canada.
Edward Zimbardi, 59, was indicted on 12 counts of wire fraud, 12 counts of money laundering and one count of money laundering conspiracy.
• Prosecutors said Zimbardi pitched The Crypto Program as a means to purchase online advertising packages, offering a guaranteed 25% monthly rate of return on an initial $550 investment.
• Instead of buying advertising packages, Zimbardi allegedly lost tens of millions of dollars betting on foreign currency, spent at least $10 million on personal expenses including a house for one of his sons and alimony payments, and used new money to repay earlier investors.
• Prosecutors said the alleged scheme ran from June 2022 to August 2023.
• They said Zimbardi fled to Fiji in July 2025 after learning that the FBI was probing him, and skipped the May wedding of one of his sons in Virginia after correctly suspecting that agents might try to arrest him. Investigators traveled to Fiji to escort him back to the U.S., arriving in Los Angeles.
• “He had victims all over the world,” U.S. Attorney Theodore Hertzberg in Atlanta said at a press conference. “If you’re promised 25% returns every month by somebody who expresses remorse for having ‘accidentally’ lost your money in the past, you might be willing to go with it because you’re that desperate to get your money back.”
• A federal public defender representing him there did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Two years ago, a California regulatory agency issued a Cease-and-Desist Order against Zimbardi.
The six-page order read, in part, “CryptoProgram a/k/a CryptoProgram.me a/k/a
Crypto Program and Edward Anthony Zimbardi are hereby ordered to desist and refrain from the
further offer or sale of securities in California, including but not limited to investment contracts
known as Packages, unless and until the qualification requirements of the CSL have been met.” You can read the entire order here: California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation-Desist and Refrain Order
Canadian province British Columbia had issued a similar order against Zimbardi. Here is the link to it: 2023-BCSECCOM-242.pdf (bcsc.bc.ca)
Zimbardi, for his part, claimed he’s not the man behind the investments – that he only represented the investors, which he declined to identify.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Mark Porter)