Financial and Investment Fraud

April 7, 2021

A default judgment was ordered against Negus Capital Inc. and its principal Aaron Butler, based on charges of commodity pool fraud in connection with binary options trading.  The order finds that defendants unlawfully solicited  the public to trade binary options contracts on the North American Derivatives Exchange, defrauded 70 customers who sent in nearly $300,000, misappropriated customer funds, and operated as an unregistered commodity pool operator. In addition to restitution, defendants were ordered to pay civil penalties of nearly $900,000.  CFTC

March 29, 2021

The SEC has awarded an anonymous whistleblower $500,000 based on recoveries in a covered action and a related action that resulted in the shut-down of an ongoing fraudulent scheme. The whistleblower first reported the alleged misconduct to their employer, using the employer’s internal compliance procedures.  Then, within 120 days of reporting the violations internally, the whistleblower submitted a TCR to the SEC.  According to the SEC, the whistleblower provided significant information that prompted it to open an investigation, and provided ongoing assistance to Commission staff.  Separately, the employer began an internal investigation and ultimately made a report to a government agency.  Because the whistleblower reported internally and to the SEC within 120 days of their internal report, the SEC applied its “safe harbor” rule and treated the whistleblower’s SEC submission as if it had been made on the day that the whistleblower reported internally.  SEC

March 26, 2021

David Boice, the co-founder and CEO of Trustify Inc., was sentenced to 8 years in prison and ordered to pay $18.1 million in restitution and $3.7 million in forfeiture following SEC charges that Boice misrepresented Trustify, an online marketplace purportedly designed to connect customers to a network of private investigators, as a successful business, fraudulently offering and selling over $18.5 million of securities to more than 250 individual and corporate investors.  Boice inflated company revenues in financial statements, fabricated customer relationships, forged correspondence purportedly from potential investors, and misrepresented the use of investor funds.  Trustify was placed in corporate receivership in 2019.  USAO ED VA

March 19, 2021

The CFTC has ordered digital asset exchange operator Coinbase Inc. to pay a civil monetary penalty of $6.5 million to settle charges of reporting false, misleading, or inaccurate information on the company’s GDAX electronic trading platform, which is published by various reporting firms and used by market participants to gauge the volume and liquidity of digital assets.  The CFTC also found Coinbase vicariously liable for a former employee who placed deceptive orders in Litecoin in order to artificially generate market interest.  CFTC