The SEC hopes to not only recover any "ill-gotten gains" from Trapani (plus penalties), but to ban him from serving in a company's leadership or participating in any other securities trading. He's facing additional fraud charges from the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, three of which could put him in prison for up to 20 years.

These latest charges come several weeks after the SEC stepped up the heat on dodgy cryptocurrency and token schemes, and Centra Tech is arguably the highest-profile scheme so far with star-studded endorsements (DJ Khaled and Floyd Mayweather among them). Regulators want to be clear that they have just as much authority over digital securities as the conventional kind, and stiff charges like these theoretically warn other fraudsters who might think the internet is a 'safe' place for their crimes.