SEC Issues a Special Order to Suspend Activity of Scam ICO that Raised $21 mln

[Goodcat49]

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) received a court order to charge Titanium Blockchain Infrastructure Services (TBIS) with fraud, Forbes reported on Tuesday, May 29. The blockchain technology company allegedly broke laws imposed by federal securities in a $21 million crypto trading scam.

“This ICO was based on a social media marketing blitz that allegedly deceived investors with purely fictional claims of business prospects. Having filed multiple cases involving allegedly fraudulent ICOs, we again encourage investors to be especially cautious when considering these as investments,” Chief Robert A. Cohen of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Cyber Unit said.
Michael Alan Stollery (also known as Michael Stollaire), the President of Titanium, got an accusation in making false and misleading claims about company’s business affairs with a number of well-known financial market players including the Federal Reserve, PayPal, Verizon, Boeing, The Walt Disney Company. Stollaire is considered to fabricate the testimonials shown on the website of the fintech company and to promote fake statements of investment opportunities like those early Intel and Google had.

A court order to halt a fraudulent initial coin offering (ICO) scheme initially named Titanium BAR Token was sent to the SEC on May 29. It claimed the digital currency scam had collected nearly $21 million from domestic and foreign investors. According to the SEC, these funds could be gathered in the period from November 2017 to January 2018. The SEC’s complaint was filed on May 22 stating that TBIS gained traders’ trust with a help of fabricated data and testimonials.

Following the SEC’s requirement, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California froze emergency assets and imposed the appointment of a receiver for the President of TBIS Michael Alan Stollery aka Michael Stollaire. He also fell under suspicion of spending a part of the funds, raised in cryptocurrency sale, on paying bills for his condominium in Hawaii. 

Read the details in the article of Coinidol dot com, the world blockchain news outlet: https://coinidol.com/sec-to-suspend-scam-ico/

[Alcor]

It would be better if the SEC created an agency that would regulate the whole activity of the ICO, checking ICO teams and creating a mechanism to protect this activity from scammers. What's the use of constantly warning citizens about the possible risks of investing in the ICO, if citizens themselves can not fully carry out such a check, because this requires the powers of law enforcement.

[btyco]

Checking the ICO team is important as there are too many anonymous ones where the team is made up of fake profiles. This will reduce the number of scams and time wasting bounties.

[altcoingamer]

It would be better if the SEC created an agency that would regulate the whole activity of the ICO, checking ICO teams and creating a mechanism to protect this activity from scammers. What's the use of constantly warning citizens about the possible risks of investing in the ICO, if citizens themselves can not fully carry out such a check, because this requires the powers of law enforcement.

As much as I sort of agree with you, this is very dangerous having this much intervention I feel.  I wish there was a happy medium between being safe but also having the freedom to invest and grow without such scrutiny.   Maybe one day we'll find the balance between the two.

[alexhelton]

Can any projects be trusted completely?

[andruke]

It is simple. If the project uses secure sales, it is safe

[alexhelton]

LOL All projects say that they are completely safe

[andruke]

You can trust projects if they raise money through w12.io [nofollow] or something like that, other times there is no 100% guarantee

[agusiska]

im little worried of crypto growth now, sorry to say but if SEC really act, why until now many fake and scam ico can still launch their project and cheated more people, is there any way we cant stop and shut down all and maybe pioneer possibility ico who was suspected as fake ico.?