Trendon Shavers
Trendon Shavers (known as Pirateat40 or simply Pirate) was the operator of the largest scam in bitcoin history: he operated a ponzi scheme[1][2] which initially promised a guaranteed a daily profit of 1%, and then disappeared with an unknown amount of bitcoins in August 2012. Thoughts were that the amount was about 500,000 bitcoins, valued around US $5 million at the time. These amounts were soon quashed once investigators realized a large hoard of coins found in their analysis did not belong to Pirate, but instead to a black market website with which Pirate used to mix his funds to hide the actual amounts he had held/stolen.
July 2013
SEC (The U.S Securities and Exchange Commission) charged Trendon Shavers with defrauding investors in a Ponzi scheme.[3]