Charles O. Parks III, who goes by the nickname “CP3O” (yes, like the Star Wars droid, but with worse judgment), is reportedly facing new allegations tied to cryptocurrency-related activity conducted while he’s been serving time.
Parks was sentenced on August 15, 2025, to one year and one day in federal prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud. The underlying scheme was a cryptojacking operation that ran from January through August 2021, during which he fraudulently obtained over $3.5 million worth of cloud computing resources from two major providers. He used those stolen resources to mine crypto, pocketing nearly $1 million in digital assets.
The original scheme: cloud theft at scale
The mined assets reportedly included Ether, Litecoin, and Monero, a mix that tells you something about Parks’ strategy. Monero in particular is the privacy coin of choice for people who don’t want their transactions traced.
Parks pleaded guilty to wire fraud in December 2024, though his original indictment included additional charges for money laundering and unlawful monetary transactions. US District Judge Eric Komitee, presiding in the Eastern District of New York, handed down the sentence and ordered Parks to forfeit $500,000 along with a luxury Mercedes-Benz purchased with proceeds from the scheme.
