ChainCatcher news, according to DL News, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a lawsuit against Touzi Capital and its CEO Eng Taing, accusing them of a $115 million unregistered securities offering fraud. According to the complaint, from 2021 to early 2023, the defendants raised approximately $118 million through false advertising of cryptocurrency mining and debt restructuring businesses, including $95 million from the crypto mining project and $23 million from the debt restructuring project, involving over 1,500 investors across the United States.The SEC stated that Taing falsely promoted the project as a "stable and predictable" high-yield savings account investment, while in reality, these investments were "highly speculative and lacked liquidity." The SEC accused the defendants of misappropriating investor funds for personal purposes and continuing to solicit investors even after the business began to collapse. In fiscal year 2024, the SEC initiated a total of 583 enforcement actions, obtaining a record $8.2 billion in financial compensation.

ChainCatcher news, according to Cointelegraph, Green United promoter Kristoffer Krohn filed a motion on October 24 in the U.S. District Court for Utah, requesting the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on the SEC's allegations in a $18 million cryptocurrency mining fraud case. Krohn argues that the SEC's application of securities law is incorrect, claiming that the company is selling high-performance computing hardware rather than securities.Previously reported, U.S. District Court Judge Ann Marie McIff Allen dismissed the defendants' motion to dismiss, stating that the SEC's allegations of unregistered securities sales are "well-supported."

ChainCatcher news, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Estonian citizens Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turõgin appeared in court for the first time yesterday on charges of cryptocurrency fraud. The Western District of Washington previously accused them of operating a fraudulent cryptocurrency mining service, HashFlare, from 2015 to 2019, deceiving hundreds of thousands of victims into investing over $550 million, but the promised mining shares were never delivered. In May 2017, Potapenko and Turõgin raised at least $25 million through investments in Polybius, claiming they would establish a virtual currency bank. Although Polybius promised to distribute dividends from its profits, the bank was never established, and most of the funds were allegedly transferred to accounts controlled by the defendants.The DOJ further alleged that the two laundered money through shell companies, fake contracts, and invoices, used to purchase 75 properties, six luxury cars, cryptocurrency wallets, and thousands of mining machines. They face charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, 16 counts of wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering, with a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each charge.