Breaking News: SafeMoon Executives Charged by SEC for ‘Massive Fraudulent Scheme’ and Unregistered Offering of Crypto Securities
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) just charged crypto project SafeMoon and its top executives for “perpetrating a massive fraudulent scheme” through the unregistered sale of crypto asset security SafeMoon (SFM).
As per a press release on the SEC’s website, the agency accuses SafeMoon executives of promising to pump the price of the token “safely to the moon”, but instead wiping out billions in market capitalization and making off with more than $200 million in project funds.
The agency claims these misappropriated investor funds were taken for personal use.
As per the SEC’s complaint, in marketing the SafeMoon crypto token, its creator Kyle Nagy assured investors that funds were safely locked and could not be withdrawn by anyone while held in SafeMoon’s liquidity pool, a collection of investor funds that provide liquidity to facilitate trading in the asset.
However, the SEC alleges that large portions of the funds in the liquidity pool were never locked, and the SafeMoon executives misappropriated millions of dollars to purchase McClaren cars, extravagant travel, luxury homes, and other things.
Alongside SafeMoon’s creator Kyle Nagy, the SEC is also charging the project’s CEO John Karony and CTO Thomas Smith.
As per the SEC’s website, the defendants are charged with violating the registration and anti-fraud provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 and the anti-fraud provisions of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
SFM is down nearly 25% in the past 24 hours in wake of news of the SEC new lawsuit, as per CoinGecko.
SafeMoon enjoyed a spectacular start to life after its initial launch in March 2021.
In the space of a few weeks, the project’s cryptocurrency SFM had rallied by more than 2,000% to eventually hit an
Read more on cryptonews.com
