LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — A federal jury convicted a Las Vegas business owner today of fraudulently obtaining $24 million from investors.
Brent C. Kovar owned Profit Connect, a Las Vegas company that claimed to use artificial intelligence on a supercomputer to mine and verify cryptocurrency transactions, from late 2017 to July 2021.
Kovar falsely claimed the company was profitable, paid investors 15% to 30% APR, offered a 100% money-back guarantee, and was backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency reserves, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
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The IRS criminal investigation team claims Kovar knew none of this was true. He used investor money to fund company operations, buy employee gifts, buy himself a house, and repay investors, making the repayments appear to come from cryptocurrency mining, officials said.
Kovar fraudulently obtained $24 million from at least 400 investors, officials say.
Trial and charges
After a nine-day trial, Kovar was found guilty of 11 counts of wire fraud, two counts of mail fraud and two counts of money laundering.
He is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 30, 2026, and faces a statutory maximum of 280 years in prison. A federal judge will determine the sentence.
“Financial fraud undermines the foundational trust of our economic system,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Sigal Chattah for the District of Nevada. “This verdict demonstrates our absolute commitment to aggressively pursuing bad actors who manipulate records to steal millions.”
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