Instead, the 24-year-old self-proclaimed math whiz used their money on a lavish lifestyle, including a $23,000-a-month Manhattan penthouse apartment, and failed investments in initial coin offerings and real estate. Federal prosecutors said Qin defrauded more than 100 people out of about $90 million (R1.3 billion).

After some of his victims said Qin should spend as long as possible behind bars for securities fraud, U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni sentenced him Wednesday to seven and a half years and called him “a potentially very dangerous person.” Qin “deliberately and consciously chose a path” to rip off investors, including fake account statements and lying to clients about how he was using their money, Caproni said. “This kind of white-collar crime is just as devastating to victims as other types of crime, and it will be punished severely.”

The judge also said the sentence was intended to discourage others from similar crimes and to protect the public from Qin, who had no trouble lying to his investors. “Virgil had a stated market strategy of ‘market-neutral,’ safe investments,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said in a statement. “Qin’s investors soon discovered that his strategies weren’t much more than a disguised means for him to embezzle and make unauthorized investments with client funds.”

More than a dozen investors had written letters to the judge, including several who said they had lost their life savings to Qin, an Australian national who dropped out of college to found Virgil Sigma Fund LP in 2017. One woman said she was left  “homeless and destitute.” Qin told the judge he “felt absolutely heartbroken” to read the letters, many of whom were family, friends or business associates.