Centra Tech CTR

What the record shows

Centra Tech, Inc. was a Miami company that sold digital tokens called CTR tokens in an initial coin offering that began in 2017 [1]. Conflict ledger row 17 records the different dates the sources give for the offering. Its three co-founders were charged in 2018, both by the SEC and by federal prosecutors in New York [2] [1]. All three pleaded guilty [2].

On November 29, 2018 the SEC settled charges against two celebrities over their promotion of the offering [3]. Its orders found that they did not disclose payments they received from Centra Tech. Neither admitted nor denied the findings [3].

In a civil suit in Miami brought by buyers of the tokens, the court entered a default judgment against the company on December 13, 2019 [4]. In June 2021 a federal appeals court sent the case back over the question of a class action and vacated the final judgment [5]. It left in place the findings that the company was liable to the buyers who brought the suit [5]. The trial court entered a final default judgment against the company on June 10, 2022 [6].

In the criminal case, one co-founder was sentenced in December 2020 to 366 days in prison [7]. A second was sentenced on March 4, 2021 to eight years in prison and ordered to forfeit $36,088,960 [1]. He appealed, then withdrew the appeal, and the Second Circuit issued its mandate on March 3, 2022 [8]. The third was sentenced on April 4, 2022 to time served [8].

In August 2024 the co-founder sentenced to eight years asked the court to reduce his sentence, and the government opposed the request in September 2024 [8]. The archived docket shows no ruling through its last update on June 4, 2025 [8].

On May 17, 2022 the court in the SEC case entered final judgments on consent against all three co-founders [2] [1]. The judgments order disgorgement and deem it satisfied by the forfeiture orders in the criminal case [2].

What the chain shows

CTR is an ERC-20 token on Ethereum. Etherscan lists the contract under the name CentraToken, with 18 decimals and a maximum total supply of 99,999,999.5 [9]. The page labels the contract “Flagged by SEC” and links SEC press release 2018-53 [9]. No primary source for a price was captured, so this page prints none.

Claims and distributions

In 2018 the government seized 100,000 Ether raised from buyers of the tokens, and the U.S. Marshals Service sold it for about $33.4 million by March 2021 [1]. The Department of Justice then set up a remission process to return forfeited money to victims, with Epiq as the remission administrator [10]. Petitions were due by April 28, 2023, and no new petitions are accepted [11]. The administrator’s remission period covers CTR tokens bought or received from July 23, 2017 through April 2, 2018 [11].

Notices of denied and partly granted petitions went out from November 10, 2025, and requests for reconsideration were due by December 10, 2025 [10]. The administrator says payments will go out once reconsideration is complete for all petitioners, and it gives no payment date [11]. If the funds cannot cover every loss, they are shared pro rata [11]. The administrator also says that neither the DOJ nor the administrator charges a fee, and it warns of other websites and messages that claim to handle remission payments [11].

Tax treatment

The court record does not create a loss. A loss needs a closed transaction. The IRS Chief Counsel memo on crypto that has crashed says a token that still trades on an exchange is not worthless, and a holder who still controls it has not abandoned it [12]. The memo reads a worthlessness loss for an individual as a miscellaneous itemized deduction, and the statute now allows none of those for any tax year after 2017, with no end date [13].

A sale is different. The IRS FAQ says a sale of virtual currency for real currency is a capital gain or loss, reported on Form 8949 and summarized on Schedule D [14]. This site has not checked two questions against a primary source: how a remission payment is taxed, and whether a pending remission changes the year a loss can be taken.

What a holder can do

The recover-or-write-off table further down lists three things a holder can do with what is left. None of them is a recommendation. Each one produces a different receipt, and the IRS reads the receipt.