Unicoin Crypto Exchange Charged in $100 Million Fraud #CriptoNews

Federal regulators charged cryptocurrency exchange Unicoin for defrauding investors.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged the company and three of its main executives for making false and misleading statements to its investors, according to a Tuesday (May 20) press release. Unicoin received more than $100 million from thousands of investors.

“We allege that Unicoin and its executives exploited thousands of investors with fictitious promises that its tokens, when issued, would be backed by real-world assets, including an international portfolio of valuable real estate holdings,” said Mark Cave, associate director in the SEC’s Division of Enforcementin the release. “But as we allege, the real estate assets were worth a mere fraction of what the company claimed, and the majority of the company’s sales of rights certificates were illusory. Unicoin’s most senior executives are alleged to have perpetuated the fraud, and today’s action seeks accountability for their conduct.”

The three executives are Unicoin CEO Alex Konanykhin; Silvina Moschiniformer president and current board member; and Alex Dominguezformer chief investment officer, the release said.

Unicoin did not reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

The charges came weeks after Konanykhin penned an opinion piece for the Miami Herald in which he said Unicoin was informed by the SEC in December that the company was facing fraud charges.

“We vehemently refute the SEC’s claims,” he wrote April 3.

Since then, the President Donald Trump administration has rolled back many of the crypto enforcement measures taken under President Joe Biden, Konanykhin wrote.

“Since, I have watched a dozen other crypto companies let off the hook of enforcement actions by the agency’s new management,” he wrote. “We would like to be next.”

That isn’t to say all crypto enforcement efforts have ended. Last week saw a report that the SEC was looking into whether Coinbase overstated the number of unique users in its past disclosures. Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal called it a “holdover investigation from the prior administration.”

The Unicoin website bills the company as an “America First” crypto firm, noting that a “new pro-crypto administration is reshaping the future of finance in the U.S.” and that “America is on its way to becoming the Crypto Capital of the World.”

For now, Unicoin’s place in that world remains unclear. The SEC is seeking “permanent injunctive relief, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains with prejudgment interest, and civil penalties,” as well as “officer-and-director bars” against the three executivesper the press release.