Tag: fraud

A fraud prosecution case in the United States (U.S.), involving initial coin offerings (ICO) recently ended in a guilty plea. According to a Bloomberg article published on November 15, 2018, the guilty man, Maksin Zaslavskiy, admitted to the U.S. judge that he had raised millions in investment and lied to approximately 1,000 investors. Guilty Man Raises ICO In Real Estate and Diamonds…

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According to a report by Bloomberg, published November 13, 2018, U.S. resident named Joseph Kim has been fined $1.1 million and sentenced to 15 months in prison for orchestrating fraudulent schemes related to bitcoin (BTC), and litecoin (LTC), thus duping his employer and several other customers of their money. Illegal Transfers and Fund Misappropriation In 2017, the U.S. Commodity Futures…

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The Blockchain Transparency Institute recently released a Global Cryptocurrency Exchange Ranking Report for November 2018. According to the Organization’s blog post, published on November 1, 2018, Binance ranks first among other digital exchanges, with 312,801 active users and a 24-hour volume of over $1 billion. Binance Ranks top of the List With over 160,000 web users and 152,000 mobile users…

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On October 18, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ordered a New York-based firm Gelfman Blueprint, Inc. and CEO Nicholas Gelfman to pay $2.5 million in fines and restitution for running a Bitcoin Ponzi scheme. The indicted Nicholas Gelfman and his company presented false investor reports to other investors assuring them of profits. Brought to Book Interestingly, this is…

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The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has taken action against Blockvest LLC., an initial coin offering (ICO) project whose founders falsely claimed to have registered with the commission, whereas they were operating illegally in the state, violating securities regulations, reported Finance Magnates on October 11, 2018. SEC Halts Blockvest ICO According to sources close to the matter, the…

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Although the U.S.’s cryptocurrency definitions regulations are entirely unclear, policymakers are gaining greater clarity as they continue to resolve more cryptocurrency-related cases. According to the CFTC’s Press release published on October 3, 2018, the US District Judge Rya W Zobel gave the CFTC authority to prosecute My Big Coin Pay, the parent company of MyBigCoin.com, a cryptocurrency payment platform, for…

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The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed charges against 1pool Ltd, a securities dealer registered in the Republic of the Marshall Islands and its founders for allegedly selling unregistered security-based swaps to U.S residents, according to statements from the commission on September 27, 2018. SEC Crushes another Bitcoin-based Business According to an SEC statement, international securities dealer…

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Federal judges made headlines on September 26, 2018, when they announced that virtual currencies meet the definitions of a commodity. Since bitcoin now falls under the same definition, the Commodity Future Trading Commission (CFTC) will continue to police virtual currencies. My Big Coin Case The reason why this decision even came up in the first place was due to a…

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Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange BitForex rose from relative obscurity to the top in a few short months. However, with the platform reporting daily transactions that exceed $5 billion, many are critical of the exchanges questionable business practices, Bloomberg reported on September 27, 2018. Crypto’s Open Secret Once just one of the dozens of obscure exchanges offering users the ability to trade…

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On September 22, 2018, Crowd Machine, a blockchain startup aiming to create the world’s first global cloud computing service built on distributed ledger infrastructure suffered a severe hack that targeted the company’s crypto wallet and led to the loss of over 1 billion of its native CMCT tokens. Following the hack, the token suffered a market drop of 87 percent…

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