Fiji handed over an American citizen suspected of involvement in multi-million-dollar cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes across the United States that promised participants returns as high as 25 percent a month and encouraged them to recruit friends and acquaintances for bonuses.
The suspect, Edward Zimbardi, 59, was “removed” from Fiji and returned to the United States last week as part of a joint operation by the FBI and Fiji’s Ministry of Immigration, senior Fiji immigration officials told OCCRP.
Zimbardi did not respond to a request for comment, and it was not immediately clear if he had been formally charged in the United States. The U.S. embassy referred questions to the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice, and Fijian immigration officials said an FBI announcement was expected in the coming days.
Zimbardi’s legal troubles began in 1997 when he was convicted in Georgia of felony theft and served roughly 17 months in prison.
More than two decades later, he again came under scrutiny over investment schemes linked to two entities known as IMG and CryptoProgram. In June 2023, California’s Department of Financial Protection and Innovation ordered Zimbardi and CryptoProgram to cease offering unqualified securities.
The California order alleged that Zimbardi told investors their funds would go solely toward online advertising, while most were actually used to pay other investors and additional funds were sent to a forex broker in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
In 2024, Zimbardi was reportedly arrested in the Netherlands, according to U.S. and Dutch media. The Public Prosecutor’s Office in the Netherlands told OCCRP that Zimbardi was named as a suspect in a criminal investigation but that the prosecution had been transferred to a foreign authority. It declined to comment further.
Regulators in California and Georgia have described Zimbardi’s investment projects as “illegal investment schemes” that operated in “the manner of a Ponzi scheme.” Georgia imposed a civil penalty of up to $500,000.
Zimbardi appears to have moved to Fiji in 2025 — the year an investor in one of Zimbardi’s enterprises filed a federal civil lawsuit in Georgia accusing Zimbardi and several associates of racketeering, fraud and securities violations.
Corporate records show he was involved in a pair of businesses — Woven (Fiji) Pte Limited and Top Quality Import Parts Pte Ltd — in Fiji’s tourism hub of Nadi, but there is no evidence that either of the Fijian companies was involved in the conduct alleged by U.S. authorities or in the civil case.
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