By Sabela Ojea
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday charged several individuals for their alleged involvement in a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme that raised more than $45 million from ten of thousands of investors.
The complaint claims orchestrators tied to CoinDeal, including alleged crypto scheme creator Neil Chandran, Garry Davidson, Michael Glaspie, Amy Mossel, Linda Knott, AEO Publishing Inc., Banner Co-Op Inc., and BannersGo told investors they could generate significant returns after selling CoinDeal for trillions of dollars to a group of wealthy buyers.
But the sale never took place, the SEC said. Instead, the complaint alleges the group misappropriated millions of dollars of investors' funds.
From at least January 2019 to 2022, Mr. Chandran, Mr. Davidson, Mr. Glaspie, Ms. Knott, and Ms. Mossel allegedly shared false and misleading statements to investors on the value of CoinDeal, according to the SEC.
The defendants allegedly used millions of dollars of investor funds for personal purposes, according to the SEC. Mr. Chandran acquired cars, real estate, and a boat with these funds, the SEC said.
"We allege the defendants falsely claimed access to valuable blockchain technology and that the imminent sale of the technology would generate investment returns of more than 500,000 times for investors," said Daniel Gregus, director of the SEC's Chicago regional office.
Neil Chandran, who owns a group of technology companies including Free Vi Lab, Studio Vi Inc., ViDelivery Inc. ViMarket and Skalex USA Inc., has been charged with three counts of wire fraud and two counts of monetary transactions related to the blockchain technology investment by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Write to Sabela Ojea at sabela.ojea@wsj.com; @sabelaojeaguix
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
01-04-23 1812ET
