Financial and Investment Fraud

November 16, 2018

CarrierEQ Inc. (Airfox) and Paragon Coin Inc. have agreed to pay civil penalties of $250,000 each to resolve charges that they conducted initial coin offerings (ICOs) in 2017 without registering the ICOs pursuant to federal securities laws.  Airfox's offering had raised $15 million and Paragon had raised $12 million.  The companies also agreed to provide compensation to harmed investors and to register their tokens as securities.  SEC

November 8, 2018

For its continued failure to prevent fraudulent money transfers, MoneyGram International Inc. (MoneyGram) agreed to pay $125 million to settle allegations it violated a 2009 order with the FTC and a 2012 deferred prosecution agreement with the DOJ. Both the 2009 order and 2012 agreement had required the global money transfer business to implement certain fraud prevention measures. Instead, even though some of its locations had reached fraud rates of as high as 50%, MoneyGram allegedly failed to take action, including failing to suspend or terminate locations or employees with high fraud rates, and failing to block individuals that it should have known were committing fraud. The new settlement expands the 2009 order and 2012 agreement to apply worldwide and requires additional fraud prevention measures. DOJ; FTC; USAO MDPA

November 8, 2018

Zachary Coburn, the founder of EtherDelta, a digital "token" trading platform, settled SEC charges that the platform operated as an unregistered exchange.  Over an 18-month period, EtherDelta's users executed more than 3.6 million orders for ERC20 tokens, including tokens that are securities under the federal securities laws.  Because it was functioning as an online national securities exchange, EtherDelta was required to register with the SEC or qualify for an exemption.  Coburn consented to the order and agreed to pay $300,000 in disgorgement plus $13,000 in prejudgment interest and a $75,000 penalty.  SEC

November 8, 2018

Commerzbank AG agreed to pay a $12 million civil fine and adopt compliance procedures to settle CFTC charges that it failed to supervise its Swap Dealer's activities and made misleading statements and material omissions to the CFTC concerning its Swap Dealer’s operations and compliance with the CEA and CFTC Regulations.  The CFTC found that Commerzbank failed to adopt any effective process for determining whether swap transactions with certain non-U.S. swap counterparties were subject to Dodd-Frank, failed to report swap transactions to swap data repositories, failed to submit Large Trader Reports, and and failed to execute certain swaps on swap execution facilities, all in violation of application rules and regulations.  CFTC

October 30, 2018

A Mississippi man has been sentenced to almost 20 years in prison for defrauding 320 investors in 14 states of more than $165.5 million dollars in what is being called the largest Ponzi scheme to come out of that state. From 2011 to 2018, Arthur Lamar Adams told investors that his company, Madison Timber Properties, LLC, bought and sold timber rights and that investments would go toward financing contracts with lumber mills. To further the scheme, he falsified timber deeds, forged signatures, and created fraudulent documents for investors. USAO SDMS

October 29, 2018

Three people have been indicted by a federal grand jury for deceiving a now defunct bank and the FDIC from 2009 to 2010. Joseph Natale, the former CEO of First State Bank, Albert Gasparro, an investment advisor, and Gary Ketchum, a business owner, allegedly duped the bank into paying them $715,000 in fees for a $7 million investment, which turned out to be primarily comprised of the bank's own funds. To further the fraud, Ketchum then took out loans amounting to $176,000 from the bank and, together with the other two defendants, misrepresented the misconduct to the bank and the FDIC. If convicted of all 13 counts of fraud, the three face decades in prison and millions of dollars in fines. USAO NJ

October 29, 2018

Matthias Krull, a former executive of Swiss bank Julius Baer Group Ltd., was sentenced to ten years in prison following his guilty plea to charges arising from his involvement in an international scheme to launder more than a billion dollars embezzled from Venezuela’s national oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA or PDVSA.  DOJ

October 24, 2018

The Attorney General of New York has filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil for misleading investors about the risks it faces due to climate change, which has resulted in billions of dollars in losses to investors such as the New York State Common Retirement Fund and New York State Teachers Retirement System. For years, the oil and gas titan allegedly falsely represented to investors that it was accounting for the rising tide of climate change regulations to its business planning. In truth, it was accounting for far less than it should or not even accounting for it at all. AG NY

October 18, 2018

Michael Siva, a broker and financial advisor at a New York City investment bank, pleaded guilty to securities violations in connection with his role in an insider trading scheme in which Siva and co-defendants traded on material non-public information regarding potential and unannounced merger and acquisition transactions, including tender offers, which they obtained from a co-conspirator employed as a technology consultant at a different investment bank.  Siva and a co-defendant generated illicit profits in excess of $3 million on the trades, and Siva also earned thousands of dollars in commissions on the illegal trades entered on behalf of his clients. SDNY.  See also, August 2017 SEC Action.