Centra Tech Co-Founder Ray Trapani Shared His Plans After Bitconned

From dramatizations like Inventing Anna to documentaries like Fyre: The Greatest Party that Never Happened, Netflix has cornered the market on scam storytelling. The streamer’s latest offering is Bitconned, which revisits the rise and fall of cryptocurrency firm Centra Tech — with the help of some of the people involved.

One such figure is Raymond “Ray” Trapani, who was the COO and co-founder of Centra Tech. In addition to featuring interviews with Trapani throughout the documentary, Bitconned also follows him to his sentencing in real time.

So, what did Trapani do? And where is he today? Here’s everything to know about his role in Centra Tech and beyond.

What Was Centra Tech?

As Bitconned explains, Centra Tech purported to create a debit card for cryptocurrency transactions in 2017. The innovative idea helped Centra Tech garner millions in investments, but the company wasn’t what it seemed, from its lack of technology and misleading credentials to a CEO who didn’t exist.

A Sentencing Surprise

In April 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Trapani with being the “mastermind” of Centra Tech’s fraud. Specifically, the charges alleged that Trapani “conspired with his co-defendants to lure investors with false claims about their product and about relationships they had with credible financial institutions.”

Trapani, along with co-founders Sohrab “Sam” Sharma and Robert Farkas, pleaded guilty, but his outcome was very different from the other men, who both went to prison.

In April 2022, on the same day that his wife went into labor with their child, Trapani went to his sentencing and did not receive jail time. The judge’s statement cited Trapani’s “extraordinary” cooperation in the criminal investigation.

Ray Trapani’s New Company

According to Bitconned, the judge ordered Trapani to pay his victims $2.9 million. The documentary’s final update is that he plans to start a company called Cambridge & Brown, which will focus on “offering loans to ‘people in need’ at 50% interest.”

Throughout Bitconned, Trapani was open about his dishonest means of running Centra Tech — even sharing that he had wanted to be a criminal since childhood. However, he didn’t share too much about his current financial situation. When asked what happened to his money, Trapani told the interviewer, “We got to stop that [question].”

He added, “I told the FBI that there’s more money out there, you know? It’s up to them to find it.”