US crypto radio host imprisoned for $650K alpaca farm fraud

  protos.com 31 August 2023 16:37, UTC

The host of a weekly crypto radio show received a two-year prison sentence on Wednesday after deceptively applying for over $660,000 in Covid-19 relief funds and spending the money on building his own Alpaca farm and running a crypto show.

Fifty-nine-year-old Dana McIntyre hosted The Dana Crypto Show and owned the Rasta Pasta Pizzeria in Beverley, Massachusetts. As detailed by the US Attorney’s Office, in March 2020 McIntyre applied for two different Covid-19 relief benefits under the names of his two children for two non-existent companies, one of which was called “Dana’s Dank Pies.”

In an application, he claimed to have no work and no income despite still running and profiting from his pizzeria. He received $17,000 from the government in September 2020. McIntyre also successfully applied for a further Covid-19 relief fund of $660,000 in April 2020. For this form, McIntyre falsified the number of his employees, payroll amounts, and tax forms in order to receive the larger sum.

He then sold his pizzeria and used most of his funds to buy eight alpacas and a farm in Vermont, which he ran as an Airbnb. The loan also paid for airtime of his weekly crypto radio show that claims to be “the first and only weekly FM radio show on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.” Funds were also used to purchase a pickup truck and vintage car, redecorate his kitchen, and pay for a cosmetic spa trip.

“The girls,” reads the caption of this image shown on McIntyre’s Airbnb page.