Munich-based crypto investor Simon Dedic said a founder his firm backed years ago has been arrested and charged with securities fraud, according to a post on X. The claim has not been independently confirmed by a public indictment or Department of Justice (DOJ) press release.
Simon Dedic, the founding and managing partner of Munich-based cryptocurrency venture firm Moonrock Capital, said on Thursday that a founder his firm invested in several years ago has been arrested and charged with securities fraud by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Dedic wrote on X that he received an email from the Department of Justice on Wednesday. He did not name the founder, the startup, the token, or the federal district in which any case may have been filed.
Dedic posted the account from his verified X account @sjdedic at 08:30 UTC on September 10, 2026. In his X post, he wrote that the founder had “promised the world, raised 8 figures, and eventually delivered the most effortless excuse for a platform, essentially just a frontend, plus a worthless token with no liquidity.”
He wrote that the founder “thought he was being clever by technically delivering his promises on paper, even though it was painfully obvious it was a rug,” and that former team members who left soon after the raise later described how the company was operated and how the money was spent.
Dedic is a founding and managing partner of Moonrock Capital, which describes itself on its website as a “crypto-native advisory and investment firm, incubating and accelerating early stage startups since 2019.” The firm is registered in Munich, Germany.
According to Dedic, Moonrock Capital’s investment in the founder’s project was “a small amount,” and the firm did not pursue litigation at the time. He said past experience had convinced him that “nothing ever seems to come out of legal cases like this,” and that the firm had treated the outcome as “poor founder diligence” before moving on. He wrote that the arrest “genuinely came as a surprise,” and inferred that “one of the bigger investors likely went after him.”
What Has Not Been Confirmed
As of publication, Dedic had not disclosed the name of the defendant, the startup, the token ticker, the year of the raise, the other investors involved, or the U.S. Attorney’s Office pursuing the case. A visible reply under his post asked which project he was referring to, but Dedic did not respond in the visible thread.
No federal charging document publicly matching the facts he described has surfaced in connection with the post, and no DOJ press release published on September 9 or September 10, 2026 cites either Moonrock Capital or Dedic by name. Readers should therefore treat Dedic’s account as an investor’s first-person description of a victim or witness notification, and not as confirmation of a named indictment.
How the DOJ Notifies Investors
The Department of Justice operates a Victim Notification System (VNS), through which people identified as victims in federal cases can receive updates by email or mail when a defendant is charged, arrested, or when case status changes. Dedic’s description of receiving an emailed notice is consistent with that process, though consistency alone does not verify the underlying case.
Securities fraud in U.S. federal court is typically charged under Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5, and is often accompanied by wire fraud counts under 18 U.S.C. § 1343. Each of those statutes carries a statutory maximum of 20 years in prison per count. Dedic did not specify a count, a district, or any potential sentence in his post.
Recent Federal Cases Against Crypto Founders
Dedic’s statement comes against the backdrop of a series of federal enforcement actions against cryptocurrency founders whose token launches prosecutors have described as effectively worthless. On August 5, 2026, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) announced an indictment against Taj Tarsha, the founder of the non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Few and Far.
Prosecutors alleged that Tarsha raised more than $10 million from at least 67 investors through Simple Agreements for Future Tokens (SAFTs) beginning in February 2022, that he was arrested on June 6, 2026, and that the FAR token, launched in May 2024, quickly became “effectively worthless” and ceased trading. The Crypto Times previously reported on the charges against the Few and Far founder.
Dedic did not connect his post to the Tarsha case, and there is no public indication that the two matters are related. The details overlap only at a high level, and that overlap is context, not identification.
Other 2026 federal actions with a similar theme include the conviction of Block Bits Capital co-founder Japheth Dillman in the Northern District of California on August 24, 2026 on wire fraud and conspiracy charges tied to a nearly $1 million cryptocurrency trading fund. That matter is separate and is not connected to Dedic’s account.
Reaction on X
Early replies to Dedic’s post were limited and largely focused on general support for enforcement rather than the specifics of any project. Several users welcomed the outcome, with one calling it “a tough lesson for everyone involved” and another writing “more of this please.” None of the visible replies added a project name, a token ticker, or a charging document.
Dedic said he was not posting to “spread fear among founders planning to launch a token” and that founders with “even a shred of integrity and honest intentions” would not face such an outcome. He wrote that founders “convinced they could game the system with worthless tokens” had been “one of the main problems of crypto,” and closed his post by writing, “The mills of justice grind slowly, but they grind.” Whether federal prosecutors publish an indictment matching the facts Dedic described will determine how much of his account can be independently corroborated.
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