The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Australian Craig Sproule and two companies, Crowd Machine and Metavine, of selling and misrepresenting altcoins in the form of an unregistered ICO. Cryptocoin. com we are conveying the details…
SEC blames those behind altcoin project for unregistered ICO
Crowd Machine is allegedly involved in an institutional ICO called Crowd Machine Compute Tokens (CMCT), which took place between January and April 2018. The SEC states that Sproule told them the proceeds from the ICO would go towards developing new technology for Metavine, enabling the company to run its application development software on a decentralized network. However, the SEC claimed that Sproule and Crowd Machine transferred $5.8 million to South African gold mining entities without notifying investors.
Further, the SEC noted that the CMCT sale constitutes an unregistered security offering, and that Sproule and its companies knowingly sell tokens without determining whether the investors are publicly recognized. The SEC has filed a complaint with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accusing Sproule and Crowd Machine of violating the registration and anti-fraud provisions of federal securities law. The defendants did not deny or admit the charges, but accepted decisions that prevented them from taking or participating in future action in this area. It was also requested that CMCT tokens be delisted from exchanges. CMCT appears to be only listed on the HitBTC exchange at the moment. The altcoin’s price seems to have experienced a 20% drop in the last 24 hours.