Police officers are looking high and low for German national Horst Jicha, after he performed a disappearing act when his ankle tag was found at his New York City residence, but him nowhere to be found.
Authorities suspect that Horst had tempered and miraculously managed to deactivate the ankle tag, which allowed him to execute his great escape on October 3. After noticing that Horst's ankle tag wasn't working, the Pretrial Service official emailed an order for him to visit their office the next day.
When he didn't turn up the next day, only then did the Pretrial Services report the issue to prosecutors. By then, 26 hours had already passed since Horst turned off his ankle tag.
Days before his escape, Horst was placed under home detention as his company was under investigation for running a $150 crypto scam.
Horst often lured his victims by promising lucrative cryptocurrency investment through his company USI Tech, where they were promised a 140% return on their investments through its purported Bitcoin mining and trading operations. Horst and his team also promised investors that they could earn extra cash if they referred others to buy USI Tech products.
But his platform turns out to be just a facade. When USI Tech came under regulatory scrutiny by US authorities, USI-Tech shut down on Jan 8, 2018, blaming investors for making misleading comments about USI-Tech's products.
As of today, Horst's whereabouts remain unknown. Records have shown that he previously lived in Brazil and Spain before he was arrested in Florida in late 2023. He was later released on bond in January, where he was obligated to stay in either New York City or Long Island and was not allowed to leave his home except for court appearances, attorney visits, or medical appointments.
It was also reported that Horst had to surrender all his passports and travel documents to the authorities as part of his deal to get bail.
Prosecutors allege that Horst launched USI Tech in Europe, where the vision of the company was to make cryptocurrency investments easy and accessible to the average retail investor.
But in reality, the company was a multilevel marketing scheme that relied on investors recruiting other investors below them to buy various purported cryptocurrency investments.
In 2017, Horst brought USI Tech to the U.S and aggressively marketed it to U.S retailers on social media and through an in-person presentation in which he false claims about the legality of the platform's investment offerings. There are still many videos on the internet showing Horst hyping the company.
The New York authorities claim that 1,774 Bitcoin and 28,589 Ether - worth more than $180 million at current prices - are missing from USI-Tech's alleged fraud scheme. Prosecutors claim that those funds were transferred to a crypto exchange deposit address controlled by Jicha.
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