The US regulator is taking legal action against crypto investment platform, Unicoin and its management team, accusing them of weaving a $100 million fraudulent scheme, luring over 5 000 investors with the false promise of tokens backed by a vastly overvalued real estate empire.
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SEC reveals architecture of large-scale organized crypto deception
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a complaint against Unicoin and three of its executives. According to legal documents submitted to a Manhattan federal court on Wednesday, May 20, the platform fraudulently raised over $100 million from more than 5 000 investors.
At the heart of this affair CEO Alex Konanykhin on member of the board of directors Silvina Moschini and the former investment director Alex Dominguez are facing serious charges. They are alleged to have issued “false and misleading” statements concerning certificates conferring rights to receive Unicoin tokens and shares.
Mark Cave, associate director of the SEC’s enforcement division, claims that since 2022, the trio has allegedly “exploited thousands of investors with fictitious promises” claiming that their tokens would be backed by an international portfolio of high-value real estate.
The reality, according to the regulator, is quite different. These real estate assets represent only a tiny fraction of the advertised value, turning the majority of certificate sales into pure financial fiction.
An edifice of financial lies revealed by the survey
The investigations of SEC reveal a particularly worrying picture of Unicoin’s business practices. The federal agency alleges that the platform claimed to have marketed more than $3 billion worth of rights certificateswhile the real figure, according to the survey, is only 110 million.
The regulator also accuses the platform of falsely presenting its products as SEC-registered, adding a further dimension to the alleged deception.
The Unicoin’s legal counsel, Richard Devlin is also among the defendants and has has already agreed to pay a civil fine of $37500, without admitting or denying the allegations made against him.
This case is one of the latest enforcement actions brought against the crypto industry by the SEC under the direction of former Chairman Gary Gensler. Unicoin had received a Wells Notice last December, a preliminary document announcing the regulator’s intention to prosecute for fraud and manipulation of unregistered securities.
This latest scandal not only threatens the company, but also risks undermining investor confidence in the sector. History has shown that the main victims of these kinds of affairs remain ordinary users, as sadly illustrated by the collapses of FTX and Terra Luna.
Prudence suggests never entrusting your entire cryptos to a single centralized platform, regardless of its reputation. A wise strategy is to place around half your portfolio in highly secure self-preservation solutions, such as D’CENT wallet, offering protection against potential failures of exchange platforms.
As a journalist at Coinpri, I’ve been captivated by the world of bitcoin and blockchain since 2020. The decentralized aspect of Bitcoin particularly piqued my interest. Since then, I’ve been working constantly to spread my knowledge, hoping one day to see a world where everyone fully enjoys their financial freedom.
