(Finance) – The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has blamed 11 people for their role in creating and promoting Forsageone fraudulent pyramid scheme based on cryptocurrencies and a Ponzi scheme that has raised over $ 300 million from millions of retail investors around the world, including the United States.
The accused include i four founders of Forsage, who in the last known position they lived in Russia, the Republic of Georgia and Indonesiaas well as three US-based promoters hired by the founders to support Forsage on its website and social media platforms, and several members of the so-called Crypto Crusaders, the largest promotional group for the scheme that has been operating in the United States for at least five different states.
According to the SEC complaint, in January 2020 Vladimir Okhotnikov, Jane Doe aka Lola Ferrari, Mikhail Sergeev and Sergey Maslakov launched Forsage.io, a website that has enabled millions of retail investors to make transactions via smart contracts that have operated on the Ethereum, Tron and Binance blockchains. However, Forsage would operate as a pyramid scheme for more than two years, in which investors earned profits by recruiting others into the scheme. Forsage also allegedly used assets of new investors to pay previous investors in a typical Ponzi facility.
Despite the cease and desist actions against Forsage for operating as a fraud in September 2020 by the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission and in March 2021 by the Montana Commissioner of Securities and Insurance, the defendants allegedly continued to promote the scheme by denying the allegations in several YouTube videos and by other meansreads a note from the SEC.
Without admitting or denying the allegations, two of the defendants, Ellis and Theissen, have decided to settle the charges and to be permanently exonerated from future violations of the offending provisions and certain other activities.