US: SEC Obtains Emergency Court Order to Freeze Assets of Fraudulent ICO

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has received an additional emergency court order to freeze the assets of Dominic Lacroix, owner of PlexCorps, in an ongoing enforcement action, Crowdfund Insider reported June 20. The SEC had previously sued Lacroix for securities fraud and received an emergency asset freeze order in December, 2017. The order was unsealed June 18.

The SEC alleges that, since December, Lacroix has been using secret accounts, including an account in his brother’s name which he controlled, to dissipate assets obtained from investors with the PlexCoin ICO. The SEC is looking to collect interest, penalties, as well as permanent injunctions, as well as an officer-and-director bar and a bar from offering digital securities.

The SEC’s initial complaint charged Lacroix and his partner, Sabrina Paradis-Royer, with violating securities law in respect to the PlexCoin initial coin offering (ICO) conducted by PlexCorps in August last year.

According to the SEC, PlexCorps promised investors a 1,354 percent return in just 29 days. The ICO reportedly raised $15 million from “thousands of investors.” The SEC described Lacroix as a “recidivist Quebec securities law violator.”

Last month, the SEC obtained a courter order to halt the activities of Titanium Blockchain Infrastructure Services Inc.’s ICO that raised $21 million from investors in the U.S. and Canada. The complaint from the SEC alleged that the company president lied about business relationships with the Federal Reserve and dozens of well known firms such as Boeing, Verizon, PayPal, and Walt Disney.

The three co-founders of cryptocurrency startup Centra Tech were formally indicted in May for running a fraudulent ICO, with charges of securities fraud, wire fraud, and two conspiracy counts. The company raised $32 million from investors in 2017. The defendants had misled investors by falsely claiming that their company had partnered with Visa and MasterCard to issue virtual currency debit cards.