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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday has charged 11 individuals responsible for developing and promoting Forsage, an allegedly fraudulent cryptocurrency pyramid and Ponzi scheme that raised over $300M from retail investors across the globe, according to a release.
The SEC’s complaint, which is seeking injunctive relief, disgorgement and civil penalties, was filed in United States District Court in the Northern District of Illinois.
The nearly two-year-old website, which enabled millions of retail investors to transact via smart contracts operating on the ethereum (ETH-USD), tron and binance (BNB-USD) blockchains, was launched in January 2020 by Vladimir Okhotnikov, Jane Doe, Mikhail Sergeev, and Sergey Maslakov, the SEC said.
Forsage allegedly incentivized investors to recruit others into the scheme in return for profits. The company “also allegedly used assets from new investors to pay earlier investors in a typical Ponzi structure,” the SEC explained. Moreover, Forsage “did not sell or purport to sell any actual, consumable product to bona fide retail customers during the relevant time period and had no apparent source of revenue other than funds received from investors, the complaint said.
In addition to the four founders, the complaint also charged Cheri Beth Bowen, Ronald R. Deering, Samuel D. Ellis, Mark F. Hamlin, Carlos L. Martinez, Alisha R. Shepperd, and Sarah L. Theissen, with breaching registration and anti-fraud provisions of…
