The Securities and Exchange Commission announced on Monday that it has filed charges against 11 individuals for their roles in the development and promotion of a fraudulent crypto pyramid and Ponzi scheme that garnered more than $300 million from retail investors across the globe, including in the US.
The four Forsage scheme founders were among those accused. The SEC said in a statement that they were last identified as having addresses in Indonesia, the Republic of Georgia, and Russia.
It was impossible to get in touch with the accused people right away for remark.
The website for the plan reportedly went live in January 2020 and allowed millions of individual investors to transact using smart contracts. According to the SEC, it allegedly ran as a pyramid scheme for more than two years during which time investors made money by enlisting new participants.
According to the SEC complaint, Forsage also allegedly used assets from new investors to pay off prior investors in a conventional Ponzi scheme.
According to Carolyn Welshhans, interim chief of the SEC’s Crypto Assets and Cyber branch, “Forsage is a fraudulent pyramid scheme that was established on a large scale and aggressively pushed to investors.” “Fraudsters cannot get around federal securities rules by concentrating their schemes on blockchains and smart contracts.”
According to the SEC, two of the defendants settled the charges without admitting or rejecting the claims, and one of them agreed to pay fines.
