SafeMoon executive team charged with multiple fraud counts, arrests made According to charges, the men misappropriated $200 million in investor funds to spend on a luxurious lifestyle. https://cointelegraph.com/news/safe-moon-executive-team-charged-multiple-fraud-counts-arrests-made The United States Securities and Exchange Commission announced on Nov. 1 that it was charging SafeMoon and three of its executives with fraud and unregistered securities sales in connection with its SAFEMOON token. The Justice Department unsealed charges against the men at the same time. According to SEC allegations, SafeMoon creator Kyle Nagy, CEO John Karony and chief technology officer Thomas Smith withdrew assets worth $200 million from the project and misappropriated investor funds. The Justice Department is charging the men with conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy. Karony and Smith have been arrested, according to the Justice Department announcement, while Nagy remains at large. The SEC claimed marketing for SafeMoon promised funds would be locked in the liquidity pool and not accessible to anyone, even the defendants, while in reality, much of the pool was not locked. U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said: “As alleged, the defendants deliberately misled investors and diverted millions of dollars to fuel their greedy scheme and enrich themselves by purchasing a custom Porsche sports car, other luxury vehicles and real estate.” SafeMoon, described as a “TikTok meme coin,” gained 55,000% in value between March 12 and April 20, 2021, to reach a capitalization of over $5 billion before plummeting when vulnerabilities were discovered in the code of a smart contract. The Justice Department claimed the market cap rose to $8 billion. According to the SEC, Karony and Smith misappropriated funds to make SAFEMOON purchases to prop up its price. Karony is also accused of wash trading. SafeMoon has faced controversy before. In February 2022, SafeMoon, Karony and several celebrities were sued, alleging they had carried out a pump-and-dump scheme with the token. SafeMoon was hacked in March 2023, but the hacker agreed to return 80% of the funds the next month.
One of the biggest mistakes is letting bullshit like “safemoon” turn you off from the whole space IMO
SafeMoon hacker agrees to return 80% of stolen funds, says development team The attacker will be allowed to keep the remaining 20% of exploited crypto, according to SafeMoon developers. What the hell?! Why would they allow a hacker (thief) to keep anything? HA! The hacker was either one of their own programmers, or a hacker working for them. GTFO
Was watching earlier today Coffezilla talking about the case... But this was such an obvious rug-pull scam, was it really worth charging anyone?
What is surprising with Kraken is not that the SEC accused it of being an unregistered platform but the allegations that the firm has been mixing customer funds with its own money -- which is fraud -- as well as being what brought FTX down. Kraken Accused by SEC of Operating Unregistered Platform, Improperly Mixing Customer Funds The U.S. crypto exchange is the latest targeted by the Securities and Exchange Commission in a series of similar actions being fought in court by other companies. https://www.coindesk.com/policy/202...ed-platform-improperly-mixing-customer-funds/ "Similarly, Kraken has held at times more than $5 billion worth of its customers' cash, and it also commingles some of its customers' cash with some of its own," the suit said. "In fact, Kraken has at times paid operational expenses directly from bank accounts that hold customer cash."