SEC Aims Sanctions against Founders of Alleged Crypto Scam Plexcoin
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is seeking sanctions against the founders of an alleged crypto scam Plexcoin.
A court document filed by the US security regulator revealed multiple allegations against Dominic Lacroix and Sabrina Paradis-Royer of being perversive to court orders issued between December 2017 and September 2018. It said that the defendants, accused of duping their investors into investing millions of dollars in a fraudulent crowdfund, ignored mandates that asked them to produce “a sworn verified written accounting,” of the assets raised. The court had also ordered the Plexcoin perpetrators to repatriate the assets, but they never turned over PlexCoin investor assets.
PlexCoin received orders to return $15 million worth of assets
From August 2017, PlexCoin started the initial coin offering round of its institutionalized token of the same name. The company promised to utilize the funds to develop a cryptocurrency ecosystem, which would be faster and more adoption-friendly than Bitcoin and Ethereum. Plexcoin to this date has raised a sum of $15 million from thousands of investors. However, investors claim that PlexCoin never delivered a thing it promised, which was why the SEC had to intervene.
The first court order against Lacroix and Paradis-Royer came in December 2017, which asked them to submit an official document revealing the amounts and the whereabouts of investors’ assets within three days and to transfer all the assets to the registry of the Court that was raised during their crowdfund program. The court later granted the accused an extension to submit the said details on December 27, 2017.
A reminder of the December 2017 order was also issued to the PlexCoin founders in August 2018, after they failed to deposit the accounting details. The revised order commanded Lacroix and Paradis-Royer to turn in the details by September 2018, which they failed to comply – once again.
“Defendants are, accordingly, once again merely disobeying this Court’s orders and the real production deadlines they have repeatedly stipulated to. Their persistent failure to comply with the Court’s laws [evidence] that Defendants have no intention of participating meaningfully in this litigation,” the SEC filing accused.
It also warned that in the absence of the requested sanctions, both Lacroix and Paradis-Royer could delay the litigation indefinitely. The filing feared that the defendants will continue to violate the prevailing court orders which would eventually lead to a complete dissipation of the investors’ assets.
“The Commission and Defendants’ investor victims should not have to wait any longer while Defendants pretend to participate in this litigation with one hand while dissipating assets and refusing to answer discovery requests with the other,” the SEC added.
CCN.com Plexcoin by CCN.com on Scribd
Featured image from Shutterstock.
