Former UNC swimming commit Gavin Mayo and another man, Gabriel Hay, have been indicted on charges that they defrauded investors of more than $22 million in cryptocurrency in what is known as a “rugpull” scheme.
Mayo and Hay, both 23, have been accused of lying to investors and defrauding them of tens of millions of dollars. They are also charged with threatening a project manager who attempted to expose the fraud.
According to the U.S. Justice Department, a rugpull is a “type of fraud scheme in which the creator of a nonfungible token (NFT) or other digital asset project solicits funds from investors for the project and then abruptly abandons the project and fraudulently retains investors’ funds.”
Mayo is originally from Greensburg, Pennsylvania, about 45 minutes outside of Pittsburgh. A sprinter, he placed 9th at the 2019 Pennsylvania AAA Boys’ State Championship meet in the 50 free and finished high school with a lifetime best of 20.60.
While he committed to swim at the University of North Carolina, and was briefly on the team’s roster, he never swam a meet for the Tarheels. He dropped out of UNC and launched a TikTok account leaning into the hyper-alpha-male niche where he posted videos about things like eating raw chicken to get his hydration instead of drinking water and referring to himself as the “youngest billionaire in the world.”
Among Mayo’s projects was the “Vault of Gems” project, which claimed to be the first NFT project backed by jewelry. He raised over $100 million on the project and then killed it, saying the “marketplace never materialized.”
Each have been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, two counts of wire fraud, and one count of stalking.
According to the Justice Department, if convicted, they each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on each of the conspiracy and wire fraud counts and a maximum penalty of five years on the stalking count, meaning a maximum of 65 years of jail time are on the table.
