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Cryptocurrency

This archive displays posts tagged as relevant to cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin and others. You may also be interested in the following pages:

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March 24, 2023

Michael Alan Stollery, the CEO and founder of purported cryptocurrency investment platform Titanium Blockchain Infrastructure Services Inc. (“TBIS”), has been sentenced to over 4 years in prison.  According to the DOJ, Stollery failed to register TBIS’s ICO with the SEC and falsified information on TBIS’s website and white papers, including information about TBIS’s prospects for profitability, client testimonials, and business relationships.  Additionally, he misappropriated client funds to pay off personal expenses.  DOJ

February 16, 2023

Nexo Capital Inc., which provides crypto-asset-related financial services, has agreed to pay $45 million to multiple state and federal securities regulators to resolve allegations that it offered and sold unregistered securities.  An investigation by a working group of state securities regulators, North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA), had found that Nexo illegally offered interest-bearing digital asset deposit accounts to over 90,000 clients with total assets valued at $800 million.  NJ AG

February 9, 2023

Payward Ventures, Inc. and Payward Trading Ltd., better known as Kraken, has agreed to pay $30 million in disgorgement, prejudgment interest, and civil penalties for its failure to register the offer and sale of its crypto asset staking-as-a-service program.  Staking involves investors locking their crypto tokens with a blockchain validator; if the tokens then become used to validate data for the blockchain, their owners are rewarded with additional tokens.  According to the SEC, Kraken advertised its staking-as-a-service program as having annual investment returns of as much as 21%, but failed to properly register or disclose risks to investors.  SEC

Top Ten Tax Enforcement Actions of 2022

Posted  02/8/23
us cash with "taxes" sign on top
Tax fraud can take many forms, but each form results in shortchanging government coffers.  More seriously, with our tax system depending heavily on taxpayers’ willingness to voluntarily file tax returns and pay taxes, tax fraud undermines confidence in the system.  Enforcement of tax laws builds confidence in the system, and deserves to be a law enforcement priority. The top tax recoveries in 2022 start with...

Top Ten SEC and CFTC Recoveries of 2022

Posted  02/1/23
stock market numbers
In 2022, the SEC and CFTC redoubled their efforts to preserve market integrity and shut down financial frauds.  Both in size and composition, the agencies’ major recoveries look quite different from a year prior.  2021 was all about crypto, with four of the top ten recoveries relating to crypto offerings or exchanges.  With the recent collapse of the crypto market—exposing some of the biggest frauds since the...

January 19, 2023

Cryptocurrency company Nexo Capital Inc. has agreed to pay $22.5 million and comply with a cease and desist order in order to settle SEC charges of failing to register the offer and sale of its retail crypto asset lending product.  The company has agreed to pay another $22.5 million and comply with additional terms in order to settle similar charges in California, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.  As part of those additional terms, Nexo must notify all remaining U.S. investors to withdraw all remaining assets from Nexo’s platform by April 2023.  SEC, AG NY

Top Ten Money Laundering Enforcement Actions of 2022

Posted  01/10/23
person following a trail of money
2022 was a big year for money-laundering enforcement.  It marked the first full year that the new FinCEN money laundering whistleblower office was up and running.  And, even more remarkably, by the end of the year, the FinCEN program expanded to welcome whistleblowers with information related to sanctions violations after Constantine Cannon attorneys called for this legal change following the Russian invasion of...

The Scale of Crypto Fraud

Posted  09/27/22
Hundred Dollars Bills and Crypto Coins
Whistleblower associate Liz Soltan, along with Alex Cala of Taxpayers Against Fraud, recently wrote about the massive scale of cryptocurrency fraud on the TAF blog. As use of crypto has increased, so too have scams. Between Jan. 31, 2021 and March 31, 2022, over 46,000 people made reports to the FTC about losing money in crypto fraud, with losses totaling over $1 billion. And that’s just victims who chose to make...

Crypto projects are toying with public funds. The False Claims Act will be a powerful tool in holding them to account

Posted  09/21/22
cryptocurrency and stocks
Last month, the Fairfax County Retirement System shared that they will be putting $70 million of their $6.8 billion fund into two crypto yield farming funds. In other words, pension money that allows teachers, firefighters, and police officers to retire will be invested into volatile digital tokens known as yield-farming projects. Yield-farming projects offer yields that are significantly higher than those...

September 19, 2022

Sparkster Ltd. and its CEO, Sajjad Daya, have agreed to pay $30 million to settle charges of offering and selling crypto asset securities called SPRK tokens that were not registered with the SEC and were not eligible for a registration exemption.  A crypto influencer, Ian Balina, was separately charged in federal court for promoting SPRK tokens on social media without disclosing that he received a 30% bonus on tokens he purchased in exchange for his posts, and for selling the tokens to an investing pool of around 50 individuals.  SEC
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