new york –
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Chinese crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun on Wednesday, accusing him and other defendants of illegally selling cryptocurrency securities and attempting to artificially inflate cryptocurrency trading volumes. accused of plotting.
Since around August 2017, Sun and his companies Tron Foundation Limited, BitTorrent Foundation Limited, and Rainberry Inc have been involved in plans to distribute billions of crypto assets known as Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT). The SEC said it did. This included the use of a “bounty program” that directs stakeholders to promote the token on social media, including US-based investors, the SEC said.
Because TRX and BTT were sold as securities, the sale had to be registered with the SEC, the regulator said in a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court.
The agency also indicted eight celebrities, including Lindsay Lohan and Jake Paul, for illegally promoting their assets without disclosing that they were receiving compensation.
According to the SEC, Sun also violated laws against fraud and market manipulation by orchestrating a scheme to inflate the apparent trading volume of TRX on the secondary market through disguised trading. From at least April 2018 until his February 2019, he told his employees to make his more than 600,000 wash trades of TRX between two of his accounts that he manages. It has been. This earned him $31 million in revenue from illegal and unregistered offers and token sales, the SEC said.
Other celebrities indicted include DeAndre Cortez Way (Soulja Boy), Austin Mahone, Michele Mason (Kendra Lust), Miles Parks McCallum (Lil Yachty) and Shaffer Smith (Ne-Yo). , was Arianne Thiam (Akon).
All but Cortez Way and Mahone agreed to pay disgorgements, fines, and interest totaling no less than $400,00 to settle the charges without admitting or denying the SEC’s findings. bottom.
Lawyers for the celebrity and Rainberry did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and lawyers for Sun were not immediately identifiable.
(Reporting by Chris Prentice and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
