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# Do Kwon, Creator of Terraform Labs, Set to Stand Trial in the US Regarding $40 Billion Terra Debacle
* Do Kwon’s court date is scheduled for January 2026.
* The Terra creator has seven days to appeal for a sooner court date.
* His attorneys have previously suggested possible pre-trial concerns.
Almost four years following the $40 billion implosion of the Terra digital ledger, Do Kwon, the formerly successful digital currency businessman, will appear before a magistrate and panel of jurors in America.
Federal Magistrate Paul Engelmayer declared on Wednesday that Kwon’s criminal proceeding will commence on January 26, 2026. Engelmayer gave Kwon a week to appeal for a sooner court date, mentioning that he hasn’t had adequate opportunity to deliberate possible dates with his legal group.
During the session in Manhattan, the magistrate admitted that he has never presided over a case with such a lengthy interval between arraignment and proceeding.
However, he supplemented that he had also never come across a case like Kwon’s, where the sheer quantity of proof poses a “significant” challenge for both litigators and defense lawyers.
## Deportation Narrative
Kwon’s deportation to America at the close of the prior year concluded an 18-month power struggle between South Korea (his native land) and the United States.
Both lands attempted to deport Kwon from Montenegro, where he was apprehended in March 2023 following a six-month pursuit. Authorities asserted he was endeavoring to board a plane utilizing a forged travel document.
Kwon declared himself innocent to nine counts of deceit last week.
Attorney Jared Lenow informed the magistrate that Kwon, who was present in court on Wednesday donning a canary yellow one-piece garment, arranged a “huge, remarkably intricate deceit.”
Lenow expressed that Kwon was not merely endorsing a token but rather an “idealized arrangement” that encompassed a stablecoin, a deposit institution, and a payment structure purportedly governed by users.
## “Central Arrangement”
However, prosecutors claim that the “central arrangement” functioned contrastingly from how it was publicized.
Lenow remarked that “affairs were not progressing seamlessly in the background.” Kwon was compelled to intervene and oversee the apparently autonomous environment to “fabricate the impression that it was operating effectively.”
Ferrara additionally alluded to possible pre-trial disputes with legal representatives.
He proposed, for instance, that proof accumulated by Montenegrin officials may need to be dismissed.
Although legal representatives have acquired permissions to scrutinize the four telephones Kwon had, which were confiscated by Montenegrin officials, it remains uncertain whether Montenegrin officials initially secured permissions to seize the telephones in the primary instance.
Kwon’s defense lawyer, Michael Ferrara, a previous government attorney, expressed that there was undoubtedly a genuine item and disproved the assertion that Kwon planned to swindle financial backers from the beginning.
Other possible contentions incorporate the legitimate status of digital currencies—Kwon deals with two counts of wares misrepresentation and two counts of protections misrepresentation—as well as the removal itself.
As per the Department of Justice, Kwon faces a most extreme sentence of 130 years if indicted on all counts.
*Aleks Gilbert is a DeFi journalist for* DL News *situated in New York. You can contact him at* *[email protected]*.
