Altcoin News: SEC Accuses Fantasy Market Founder of Fraudulent ICO

September 24, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged the fraudulent initial coin offering (ICO) founder of Fantasy Market adult entertainment marketplace Jonathan C. Lucas.

According to the SEC, starting in August 2017, Lucas attracted about $63,000 in cryptocurrency from more than 100 investors by fraudulently selling unregistered securities in digital form. The regulator believes that Lucas made inaccurate statements on the substance of the project in white paper and on the network in order to attract investors to participate in the ICO. Among other things, he argued that Fantasy Market had a “working beta version” of the product, which in reality was not, he named fictitious persons as project managers and provided false information about his own work experience. After the complaints of investors began to spread in the media, Lucas decided to return all the money collected.

The SEC filed a lawsuit in the Manhattan Federal District Court, where it stated that Lucas violated the provisions of the securities laws related to countering fraud and registration. Lucas agreed with the charges, without acknowledging and not rejecting his guilt, and pledged to continue to not violate these provisions of the laws, as well as to pay $15,000 as a fine. The decision is pending final approval in court.

“I don’t have regulator telepathy but maybe SEC would like you to know that size of a violation maybe doesn’t matter,” writes lawyer Stephen Palley, drawing attention to the modest scale of the Fantasy Market ICO compared to other dubious campaigns in this space.

SEC indicted last week against the ICOBox platform and its founder due to alleged violation of US laws in the process of its token sale in 2017 and subsequent activities for the initial coin offerings.

Author: Marko Vidrih