ChainCatcher News, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Department of Justice (DOJ) jointly filed lawsuits on October 9 against four cryptocurrency companies suspected of fraud and market manipulation, including Gotbit Consulting, ZM Quant Investment, and CLS Global. These manipulated tokens were then sold at artificially inflated prices to unsuspecting buyers. These companies also promoted these tokens and persuaded exchanges to lower fees, further increasing profits.Gotbit is the largest company on this list. This market maker collaborated with well-known brands such as Bonk, Neiro, Hamster Kombat, and Robo Inu. At its peak, the company managed assets totaling $1.5 billion and made nearly $200 million in investments through Gotbit Ventures. Gotbit now faces a maximum fine of $5 million or twice the amount of illegal gains or losses, as well as asset forfeiture. The CEO, who is also facing charges, could face up to 20 years in prison.It is reported that in 2019, Gotbit's 20-year-old CEO Alexey Andryunin told CoinDesk about his practices: Gotbit was not registered in any jurisdiction because it was "not entirely ethical." In 2023, ZachXTB uncovered Andryunin's operations with the help of some leaked documents and a promotional material that stated: "In the first few minutes of the price discovery phase, we will push the price up 10 times to create FOMO and accumulate as much buying power as possible, and sell the most tokens during the subsequent surge."

ChainCatcher News, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it has charged Meta Materials Inc. and its former CEO with market manipulation, fraud, and other illegal activities.The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today filed charges against Meta Materials Inc. and its former CEOs John Brda and George Palikaras. The company has agreed to resolve the SEC's charges in an administrative proceeding, while the SEC's lawsuit against Brda and Palikaras will proceed in federal district court.In a complaint filed in the Southern District of New York federal district court, the SEC alleges that Brda and Palikaras orchestrated and executed a manipulation scheme, which included the immediate issuance of preferred stock dividends prior to a merger. The complaint alleges that Brda and Palikaras informed certain investors and advisors and hinted through social media that the dividend would force short sellers to exit their positions and trigger a "short squeeze," artificially inflating the price of the company's common stock.

ChainCatcher news, according to South Korean media Digital Asset, the Ministry of Justice of South Korea stated, "The Southern District Prosecutor's Office's Joint Investigation Team for Virtual Asset Crimes is working hard to crack down on the manipulation of the virtual asset market, unreported virtual asset exchanges, and virtual asset deposit fraud." The Ministry of Justice selected the PICA fraud case of 90 billion won, illegal exchange operations of 5.8 trillion won, and the Haru Invest deposit fraud case of 14 trillion won as representative examples of these crimes.The Ministry of Justice stated, "We are discussing with the Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service to formulate subsidiary laws, such as the calculation method for unfair profits from unfair trading behaviors in virtual assets." He added, "We expect this will help quickly investigate unfair trading behaviors in the virtual asset market, thoroughly recover criminal proceeds, and enhance the reliability and stability of the market."

ChainCatcher news, according to sources cited by Wall Street, Binance has fired its monitoring director after discovering that DWF Labs was suspected of market manipulation.

ChainCatcher news, according to sources cited by Bloomberg, the Binance monitoring team found that DWF Labs was involved in market manipulation.

ChainCatcher news, according to Bloomberg, a jury of 12 federal jurors in New York will decide whether Mango Markets attacker Avi Eisenberg manipulated the market.It is reported that on Wednesday, the jury heard the closing arguments from the U.S. government in the case against Eisenberg, who was arrested in December 2022 in Puerto Rico and charged with commodity fraud, commodity manipulation, and wire fraud related to Mango Markets. If all three charges are upheld, he faces up to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors concluded Eisenberg's trial on Wednesday, stating that he manipulated futures contracts through false trading of MNGO tokens on October 11, 2022, and that traditional criminal law applies to Eisenberg.However, Eisenberg's defense attorney argued that he "employed a successful and legal trading strategy in which he put his own funds at risk. He fully complied with the smart contracts of Mango Markets." The jury did not reach a final verdict on Wednesday. They will reconsider the three charges against Eisenberg on Thursday.

ChainCatcher news, BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo will face a class-action lawsuit from users. U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Carter ruled that Ben Delo played a central role in a scheme to manipulate prices at the cryptocurrency exchange. This ruling came after Ben Delo's request to dismiss the lawsuit, but Judge Andrew Carter found that he played a significant role in designing the clearing system, allowing BitMEX to profit from the alleged manipulation.

ChainCatcher news, according to Cointelegraph, former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky's lawyers have filed a motion in federal court requesting the judge to dismiss charges related to commodity fraud and market manipulation.According to a document submitted on January 12 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Alex Mashinsky's legal team has filed a motion asking the court to dismiss two felony charges that the former Celsius CEO may face in the trial set for September 2024. The document states that the second charge of commodity fraud is "inconsistent" and "illogical" with the first charge of securities fraud regarding the government's handling of cryptocurrency.Alex Mashinsky's lawyers also argued that the court should dismiss the sixth charge of market manipulation due to "lack of fair notice," claiming that the U.S. government has "created" a criminal charge for a civil violation.

ChainCatcher news, Binance has released an official announcement stating that it has reached a resolution with the U.S. Department of Justice, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) regarding their investigations into Binance's past issues related to registration, compliance, and sanctions. When Binance started operations, it did not have sufficient compliance management measures to match its rapidly growing business. As Binance grew rapidly worldwide, the industry was still in an emerging and evolving stage, and regulation was still in its early days, leading Binance to make some wrong decisions during this process. Today, Binance takes responsibility for these past actions.It is noteworthy that in the aforementioned resolution, U.S. regulators did not accuse Binance of misappropriating any user funds, nor did they accuse Binance of any market manipulation. Former CEO Changpeng Zhao will remain as a major shareholder, providing consultation on matters related to the platform's development. Binance has never wavered in its core values of maintaining user safety and security, and will continue to promote cooperation with global regulators in the future. Only by maintaining transparency and compliance can the industry rebuild trust in a chaotic market environment.

ChainCatcher message, dForce founder Mindao stated that the issues exposed by the recent attack on the Curve protocol have been further amplified. The founder has collateralized nearly 50% of the circulating supply for real estate and other leverage, and it is now evident that there is insufficient liquidity to reduce leverage. The greatest negative impact on Curve is not the hacking incident, but rather these actions by the founder, the extremely high concentration of governance tokens, and various obvious operations, which can easily be defined as security tokens and market manipulation.

ChainCatcher news, the token STMX of the cryptocurrency cashback project StormX seems to have experienced market manipulation. Binance customer service representative @sisibinance stated on Twitter about 2 hours ago: "Regarding the incident with the $STMX contract, the relevant team is handling it urgently, and further information will be shared later. For now, please fill out a complaint form with our online customer service."Neither @sisibinance nor StormX immediately responded to requests for comment. (source link)

ChainCacher message, previously AGLD experienced a severe Pump and Dump event, rising above $1.4 on July 20, only to quickly drop to $0.76 the next day, and has now fallen below $0.7.Twitter user DeFi^2 tweeted that there are 3 accounts on the Bybit profit leaderboard that were newly opened in the past 5 days and have only traded AGLD, accumulating a profit of $1.268 million, raising suspicions of market manipulation.

ChainCatcher News, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has officially charged Tron founder and Huobi Global Advisory Committee member Justin Sun, along with his three wholly-owned companies, Tron Foundation, BitTorrent Foundation, and BitTorrent, alleging illegal sales of unregistered securities, fraud, and market manipulation.The SEC stated that Justin Sun attempted to artificially inflate TRX trading volume through wash trading, having his employees conduct over 600,000 virtual TRX trades between accounts on two cryptocurrency exchanges he controls, with daily wash trades amounting to approximately 4.5 million to 7.4 million TRX. The assets used for these illegal trades (TRX) were all provided by Justin Sun himself. Additionally, the SEC also charged 8 celebrities for illegally promoting TRX or BTT without disclosure. (Source link)

ChainCatcher News: The U.S. Department of Justice has arrested Mango Markets attacker Avraham Eisenberg in Puerto Rico and charged him with commodity fraud and market manipulation in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.The indictment shows that in October of this year, Eisenberg used oracle price manipulation techniques on Mango to extract $53.7 million in USDC, $3.2 million in USDT, and SOL, causing the price of Mango's native token MNGO to plummet by 50% to about $0.02 that day. (blockworks)

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinDesk, former FBI agent and co-founder of the crypto investigation firm Naxo, Chris Tarbell, stated that the $114 million in funds drained from the DeFi protocol Mango Markets was not a hacker attack, but rather a form of market manipulation.Tarbell believes that hackers are more interested in manipulating the platform's native token rather than breaching the system. The self-identified intruder, Avraham Eisenberg, referred to the exploit as a "highly profitable trading strategy" in a tweet, and then confirmed he would return $67 million of the stolen funds. Tarbell stated that the crypto industry needs to clean itself up, and regulators may intervene. (source link)