The Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC“) filed a civil complaint against 5 American promoters of the Blockchain protocol known as BitConnect this week. Investors from around the world lost over US$2 billion with BitConnect. The SEC alleges that the defendants conducted an unregistered offering and sale of securities in connection with its native coin and […]
According to the Twitter account of a Bitcoin investor, the DeFi platform called DeFi100, that is listed on Binance, posted a notice on its website earlier today that it scammed its investors and that there was nothing the investors could do about it. “Ha ha. All you moon boys have been scammed. Fuck you moon […]
The hunt for Faruk Fatih Özer’in, aka Özer, a Turkish foreign national, may be over. Özer ran a large digital currency exchange in Turkey called Thodex. He fled Turkey in April and US$2 billion of money from its customers is apparently missing, or inaccessible. In the CCTV footage below, he is seen arriving at the […]
China is reporting that in 2020, 64% of cybercrime involved financial fraud, including online illegal gambling, online illegal loans and illegal securities sold online on various platforms, such as WeChat and QQ. Many of the fraud cases involved Bitcoin and other digital currencies. In December 2020, the public security agency of China intercepted a transnational […]
A Russian national, Maksim Boiko, who was accused of operating a money laundering as a service (“MLaaS“) business, pleaded guilty in Pittsburg today, to one count of conspiracy to launder money. In this case, the MLaaS involved opening personal and company bank accounts to receive and then move money for criminals and opening Bitcoin accounts […]
US$60 million penalty On October 19, 2020, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN“) assessed a US$60 million penalty (here) against Larry Dean Harmon, the owner of two Bitcoin mixing and anonymizing services called Helix and Coin Ninja LLC. FinCEN found that the two entities were operating as unregistered money services businesses (“MSB“) which exchanged currencies, […]
He called himself a serial entrepreneur. A Court found him to be a serial scammer. Aziz Com Mirza, a Canadian dropout from Montreal was convicted of fraud in a Dubai criminal court this week, sentenced to six months in jail and fined US$75,000. A few days earlier, he had been sentenced to a term of […]
The founder of a digital currency exchange lied so much to the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC“) during its investigation and to a California Court, and made himself so not credible, that a Court has recommended one of the harshest remedies available – to deprive the defendant of the constitutional right to be heard – […]
A Canadian, possibly Iranian Canadian, pled guilty in New York today to conspiracy and securities fraud in connection with a scheme where fake securities of tech companies, such as Twitter and Uber, were sold to investors who suffered losses of US$18 million. Fred Elm, whose real name is Frederic Elmaleh from Toronto, led an investment […]
After two years, the Attorney General for the Southern District of New York has unsealed the indictment against Karl Sebastian Greenwood, a promoter of the Bulgarian initial coin offering, and supposed digital currency called OneCoin. Greenwood was allegedly extradited to the US from Thailand in 2018. Indictment unsealed In the indictment, Greenwood is charged, inter […]