An Australian and two Americans have been charged with orchestrating a $1.9 billion cryptocurrency scam based around a purported DeFi platform, HyperFund, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Monday. The DOJ accused Australian citizen Sam Lee of co-founding HyperFund and Rodney Burton and Brenda Chunga of promoting it, together defrauding investors of $1.89 billion by claiming that investment returns would come from what the court called “non-existent cryptocurrency mining operations.”