The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is charging the team behind the CoinDeal scheme for allegedly defrauding tens of thousands of investors.
The SEC filed a complaint against Neil Chandran, Garry Davidson, Michael Glaspie, Amy Mossel, Linda Knott, AEO Publishing Inc, Banner Co-Op, Inc, and BannersGo, LLC for their involvement in the alleged fraudulent scheme that raised more than $45 million by selling unregistered securities to tens of thousands of investors around the globe.
Per the SEC, the team allegedly claimed that the investors could receive huge returns after they sell the blockchain technology called CoinDeal for trillions of dollars to a group of deep-pocketed buyers.
But no CoinDeal sale ever took place and investors saw no returns on their initial investment, according to the complaint. Additionally, Chandran allegedly used investor money to buy cars, real estate and a boat.
Says Daniel Gregus, Director of the SEC’s Chicago Regional Office,
“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.
As alleged in our complaint, in reality, this was all just an elaborate scheme where the defendants enriched themselves while defrauding tens of thousands of retail investors.”
Chandran was previously indicted in June 2022 for his involvement in CoinDeal activities by the U.S. Department of Justice on three counts of wire fraud and two counts of monetary transaction in unlawful proceeds, per the SEC.
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