Riccardo Spagni also known as Fluffypony is a maintainer of the Monero project, a privacy-preserving cryptocurrency. He was previously the lead maintainer of the project and stepped down from the role and continued to be involved with Monero as a maintainer in December 2019. ^[1][16]

Career

Riccardo Spagni is a member of the Monero Core Team, who stewards the Monero Project. He has an academic background in informatics and logistics and has spent many years in software development, before starting a business in the import/export industry with his wife^[10]. Due to the success of that business, he had enough freedom to start tinkering with Bitcoin early in 2011. ^[15]

In 2012, he became involved in various cryptocurrency-related projects, and in 2016 he launched Globee, a cryptocurrency payment processor. ^[2]

In 2014, Spagni created and launched MyMonero, a wallet to use Monero on desktop and mobile. He was also a lead maintainer and a contributor of Monero, a privacy-preserving digital currency where he was responsible for executing the release procedures in Github repositories. ^[3][4]

After five years at Monero, Riccardo stepped down as lead maintainer on 16th December 2019 but remained as maintainer of the project.

"I'm stepping back as lead maintainer, but continuing on as a maintainer, to further decentralise the project. I've been talking about doing this for two years, since I stepped back as lead maintainer on the Monero website and Monero GUI projects, so it should come as no surprise." - Riccardo Spagni told DeCrypt ^[7][8]

Riccardo Spagni is currently building Tari, a blockchain-based, decentralized assets protocol built in Rust, private by default, open-source, and is being architected as a merge-mined sidechain with Monero. ^[5]

Controversy

Riccardo Spagni was arrested in Nashville, Tennesse on July 20, 2021, on fraud charges tied to alleged offenses in South Africa between 2009 and 2011. Spagni was on board a private jet scheduled to fly to Los Cabos, Mexico when he was apprehended in Nashville during a scheduled refueling stop, according to court documents^[6].

The arrest was made at the request of the South African government, seeking Spagni’s extradition on fraud charges. The charges, unrelated to Spagni’s role at Monero, were tied to his previous employment as an information technology manager at a company called Cape Cookies alleging he “used false information” to create invoices that inflated the prices for certain goods and services and had funds transferred to a bank account he controlled. ^[9]

After a month in custody, Riccardo was released in September 2021. In a tweet, Spagni said he was working with his legal team to return to South Africa to address the allegations against him. ^[12]

I am very pleased that the U.S. court has released me. I am actively working with my attorneys on a way to return to South Africa as soon as possible so I can address this matter and get it behind me once and for all. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do. ^[11]

In a court filing^[13] for the Middle District of Tennessee, Magistrate Judge Alistair Newbern ordered Spagni to surrender to U.S. Marshals on July 5, 2022, for extradition to South Africa. ^[14]

On July 21, 2022, Riccardo Spagni was released from custody on a warning by the Cape Town regional court in South Africa. As per a local report, the Cape Town court was charged with ruling on whether to release Fluffypony from custody pending his trial on the fraud charges. ^[17]

On the 14th of March, 2023, the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) dismissed a bid by Riccardo Spagni to have his extradition from the US to South Africa on fraud charges declared illegal. The SCA ruled that in light of the fact that Spagni was legally represented when he waived his rights to an extradition hearing in the United States, he could not now challenge the validity of the extradition request.^[18]

"It found that the appellant had failed to make out a case for this court to determine the validity of his extradition process as that would have no practical effect. The appeal was thus dismissed on mootness alone." - the court said in a summary of its ruling

Spagni's fraud trial is expected to continue in the Regional Magistrate's Court in Cape Town. ^[18]

Personal Life

Riccardo Spagni and his wife^[10] live along the Garden Route, Plettenberg Bay on the coast of South Africa, where he spends weekends packrafting, hanging out with their dogs, building and flying multi-copters, and playing with LEGO. ^[2]