SEC charges 11 people over 'textbook' $300 million crypto Ponzi scheme
-
Loading... - Denki Yamamoto
- 03 Aug 2022
- 83 Views
- 0 Like
- 0 Comment
It's a day of the week ending in the letter "y," which inevitably means there's news of another messy saga in the cryptocurrency world. The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged 11 people who allegedly set up and promoted Forsage, which it said was a crypto Ponzi scheme that pulled in over $300 million from retail investors.
The agency asserts that Forsage enabled millions of people to engage in transactions through smart contracts on the Ethereum, Tron, and Binance blockchains. It alleged that Forsage had essentially been operating as a pyramid scheme for over two years, wherein the main way for investors to make money was by luring other people into the scheme. “Fraudsters cannot circumvent the federal securities laws by focusing their schemes on smart contracts and blockchains," Carolyn Welshhans, acting chief of the SEC’s Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit, said in a statement.
"Forsage is a textbook pyramid and Ponzi scheme," the SEC's complaint reads. "It did not sell or purport to sell any actual, consumable product to bona fide retail customers during the relevant time period and had no apparent source of revenue other than funds received from investors."
Four of those charged are Forsage's founders, who were last known to be living in Russia, the Republic of Georgia and Indonesia. Read More...
