A Manhattan court has sentenced the operator of the fraudulent crypto investment firm Centra Tech to a year and a day in prison. Per a Tuesday announcement from the Department of Justice, Robert Farkas successfully solicited $25 million in investment during the 2017 initial coin offering boom. The ICO famously included promotion from boxer Floyd Mayweather and musician DJ Khaled, both of whom got in legal trouble for failing to disclose that they were paid for their participation. On top of the celebrity endorsements, Farkas' scheme included lies about Centra Tech's licensing as a money services business in 38 states, …

Dissolved limited liability company Crypto Traders Management is seeing its legal troubles multiply. Per a Friday legal filing in Utah, CTM and its former manager Shawn Cutting are trying to fight off a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC is apparently demanding financial data from Cutting — specifically, all of the transaction information from his Wells Fargo accounts as well as his communications with the bank. Cutting is trying to quash the SEC's request by pleading a right to financial privacy. Back in July, former investors in CTM filed a civil suit accusing the firm of selling …

Using blockchain technology, initial coin offerings have become an alternative means of acquiring funding for business projects using the new, evolving digital financial market for tokens. In contrast to initial public offerings, which are governed by strict legal regulations, ICOs require only a white paper and some interesting features, such as a lack of barrier to entry, a scope for exponential growth, absence of geographical barriers and easy validation. Hence, it may not be surprising that the ICO market experienced extraordinary growth recently. Research shows that from January 2016 to August 2019, ICOs raised nearly $13 billion worldwide. Despite the …

Cyber Security firm CipherTrace has issued a warning after noting a surge in reports over the past 24 hours of user funds being stolen by a malicious Chrome browser extension posing as popular crypto wallet MetaMask. The warning was issued under the headline, “ALERT: Malicious Crypto Browser Extension — Masked MetaMask” and reported the company had seen “an uptick of alerts and comments within the online cryptocurrency community of users’ funds being stolen.” In response to online criticism that MetaMask is not doing enough to steer its users away from potentially harmful websites and downloads, MetaMask’s chief product officer Jacob …

Per a Monday announcement, the United States Department of Justice and the Southern District of New York have extradited from Panama a leader of alleged Ponzi scheme AirBit Club. Gutemberg Dos Santos is one of six operators of AirBit Club indicted, and the last to come into the U.S. to face trial before the SDNY. Dos Santos is a dual citizen of Brazil and the United States. Authorities initially apprehended five of the six back in August, with a sixth avoiding authorities until October. The DoJ alleges that AirBit Club sold "memberships" that promised guaranteed returns. The six operators marketed …

The PlusToken controversy, which has led to the arrest of 109 individuals so far, has also reportedly resulted in a titanic seizure of crypto assets by Chinese authorities worth $4.2 billion at today’s prices. According to court filings released publicly on Nov. 19 and posted by The Block, authorities seized a staggering 194,775 Bitcoin (BTC), 833,083 Ether (ETH), 1.4 million Litecoin (LTC), 27.6 million EOS, 74,167 Dash, 487 million XRP, 6 billion Dogecoin (DOGE), 79,581 Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and 213,724 Tether (USDT) from seven individuals convicted in the case. According to the ruling from the Yancheng Intermediate People’s Court, gains …

Many crypto owners fall prey to common crypto theft schemes, including phishing traps. How can the average crypto user identify and avoid these attacks to prevent the potential loss of funds? Know the source Phishing emails are sometimes successful in their attempts to trick users into downloading programs, clicking on something they shouldn’t, or just linking them to a page where they can enter personal information like their seed phrase. In July, hardware wallet Ledger reported a data breach that affected the personal data of many of its users, some of whom continue to be the target of phishing attacks. …

Decentralized finance continues to make its impact on the crypto market, and with over $13 billion of total value of assets locked, DeFi projects are clearly resonating with eager crypto investors. Yet while the DeFi space has been progressing over the last year, a number of illegitimate projects have come to fruition, reminding some of the 2017 ICO boom and its subsequent bust. For example, Harvest Finance, a major decentralized protocol, was recently hacked. The attacker made away with $24 million from Harvest Finance pools. Most recently, Value DeFi, the decentralized finance protocol, fell victim to a $6-million flash loan …

A fraudulent mobile application claiming to be the Uniswap exchange has reportedly stolen money from an investor, offering an important reminder of the scams that still pervade the nascent cryptocurrency industry. Alex Saunders, founder and CEO of the Australia-based Nuggets News, recently reported that one of his members lost $20,000 to a fake Uniswap mobile application that was listed on the Google Play Store. The app, called “Uniswap DEX,” was published Nov. 10 by a person or entity called Uniswap Inc. The user reportedly entered in their private key backup phrase, thinking they were accessing the Uniswap decentralized exchange, when …

Three associates of Clifford Joseph Harris Jr., a rapper also known as T.I. who was responsible for helping launch the FLiK token, have agreed to pay more than $100,000 after a U.S. district court approving a settlement. According to records filed Nov. 17 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Chance White, Owen Smith, and William Sparks Jr. will pay $102,992 in a settlement covering penalties, fees, and disgorgements for their role in selling tokens in initial coin offerings, or ICOs, for FLiK and CoinSpark. T.I., a rapper, singer, and songwriter, has won three Grammy Awards …

Phishing attempts and scams against Ledger wallet owners are on the increase with one such scam netting more than 1,150,000 XRP from its victims. The scam used a phishing email that directed users to a fake version of the Ledger website that substituted a homoglyph in the URL — in this case a letter that looked like the letter ‘e’ but wasn’t. On the fake site, victims were fooled into downloading malware posing as a security update which drained the balance from their Ledger wallet. I got a txt message last night with my full name saying ledger security alert....to …

Binance announced Wednesday the successful recovery of $344,000 in funds from the attempted exit scam of Wine Swap, a project on the Binance Smart Chain (BNB). Wine Swap was an automated market maker platform similar to Uniswap that launched on Oct. 13. Within an hour of the launch, it had amassed $345,000 in funds, which were promptly pulled from the platform by the creators of Wine Swap. The funds were then spread across several directions in a bid to get them out of Binance Smart Chain. The majority were swapped to the Ethereum blockchain, though a portion was also sent …