Subscribe
‘Enforcement 40’ for 2020
Our Sponsors
Join Us On LinkedIn
Join the Securities Litigation and Enforcement Group on LinkedInBlockFi Bankruptcy Filing Shows It Owes $30 Million to US SEC – Bloomberg
The US Securities and Exchange Commission is one of the largest creditors to BlockFi, which filed for bankruptcy in the wake of a number of failures within the digital-assets space. The regulator has a $30 million unsecured claim against the crypto lender, according to a filing Monday. That makes it BlockFi’s fourth-biggest creditor, behind Ankura […]
SEC Awards $20 Million to Whistleblower
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced an award of $20 million to a whistleblower who provided new and critical information that led to the success of an enforcement action. In determining the appropriate award amount, the SEC considered that the whistleblower provided significant information and continuing assistance that helped Enforcement Division staff more quickly […]
U.S. Crypto Exchange Kraken Settles With Treasury Dept. – The New York Times
Kraken, a U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, agreed on Monday to pay more than $360,000 to the Treasury Department to settle accusations of sanctions violations involving virtual currency transactions by users in Iran. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said Kraken, the second-largest crypto exchange by volume in the United States, had agreed to a […]
Regulating Crypto Not a ‘One-Agency Solution,’ CFTC Commissioner Says
When the day comes, it’s unlikely crypto will be regulated by just one government agency, said Summer K. Mersinger, a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). “It’s not going to be just a one-agency solution,” she said Monday on CoinDesk TV’s “All About Bitcoin” when asked about the regulatory ramifications for crypto from […]
Criminal Insider Trading in Personal Networks by Joan MacLeod Heminway — SSRN
This Article describes and comments on criminal insider trading prosecutions brought over an eleven-year period. The core common element among these cases is that they all involve alleged tipper/tippee insider trading or misappropriation insider trading implicating information transfers between or among friends or family members (rather than merely business connections). The ultimate objectives of the […]
BIG CRYPTO’S BOGUS DEMANDS FOR “REGULATORY CLARITY” – The FinReg Blog
Despite its pervasiveness and bluster, the laughable Big Crypto tagline calling for regulatory clarity is nothing more than a desperate deflection and noxious red herring. Intended to sidetrack and dissemble the plain truth — that the crypto-emperor has no clothes — the regulatory clarity and SEC hit-pieces are pure subterfuge, and an impulsive and frantic […]
States Lead Crypto Enforcement as Feds’ Deal With Inchoate Role
“There has been an absolute change in our work over the last couple of years, and I think it’s fair to say in state securities regulation,” said Joe Rotunda, the director of enforcement at the Texas agency, whose investigations and actions on digital assets account for about 10% of enforcement workload. State securities regulators are […]
Why the CFTC was Sam Bankman-Fried’s favorite Washington agency – The Washington Post
Before his undoing this month, crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried aggressively pursued powerful allies in Washington. None was more important than Rostin Behnam. The chief of the federal agency that oversees commodities markets, Behnam holds a strategic perch among the nation’s financial regulators. And the 44-year-old Washington bureaucrat was indispensable in the boyish billionaire’s ambitious plans […]
Crypto’s Final Price Could Be Zero – WSJ
The new poster child for the toxic cocktail of technology and debt is Sam Bankman-Fried, with his imploded FTX and Alameda empires. Sure, these companies misappropriated, to put it nicely, customers’ assets. And yes, withdrawals that acted like a bank run drove the company into Chapter 11. But the company’s original sin was to borrow […]
SEC kicks enforcement into overdrive in 2022 | Pensions & Investments
Gurbir S. Grewal, director of the enforcement division, in a speech at the Securities Enforcement Forum on Nov. 15, noted that in the five fiscal years prior to 2022, the commission ordered more than twice as much in disgorgement as it did in penalties. “To me, that ratio is backwards because it means, on a […]